How to trust the Finance Minister? When his record for the farm sector is near zero! Is India’s banking sector healthy? It depends who asks this question and also who answers the question. After the bank nationlisation it is the government that controls the banks (PSBs) and the RBI supervises them. The present government in…
Globalisation:What lessons for India?
Are we optimists or pessimists? The Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, was in India for four days, his fourth visit to India and he spoke glowingly about India looking futuristic with enormous human skills. The last 10 years had been the best so far in Indian history. Microsoft will invest 1.7 billion dollars in the next…
A higher growth rate in agriculture?
Such claims invite more cynicism than optimism! A mid-term review of the year, the economy projects a higher economic growth in agriculture. Some newspapers gave such figures like three to four per cent for agriculture, while others, more sober newspapers simply omitted the exact figures and simply talked of a ‘slightly higher growth rate in…
C.S.Ramakrishnan — Conversations On Gandhians, Tagoreans and much else!
On an unexpected day I had a caller in Bangalore. It was C.S. Ramakrihnan (CSR), a long time friend. I have had many friends, big and small and I often wondered whether I have friends in the sense others talk of theirs. I cant say I have childhood friends whom I remember now. Nor my…
Can Kerala be turned around?
West Bengal Chief Minister offers a model for Kerala politicians. The Kerala Left politicians are dreaming to capture power in the next Assembly elections. But Kerala politics is not one of black and white as in Bengal. Here the coalition politics have many shades of alignments and re-alignments. The question is: do the Communists in…
Globalisation ended Marxism?
Eric Hobsbawm, the Marxist historian, at the end of his rather elaborate essay on the fall of Communism in 1989 asks the question: Whether or in which of its forms, Marxism, the intellectual justification and inspiration of communism, would continue remainsa matter of debate. Clearly, if Marx would live on as a major thinker, which…
Teach globalisation in schools/colleges!
New Delhi prescribed education curriculum not enough! Our education must meet our current inspirational goals! We live in a new world. A globalised world. India is enjoying an outsourcing boom and we are created unprecedented wealth for the first time in India’s history! The time has come to ask for some radical change in our…
Our democracy: the economics and politics of it!
The Prime Minister, true to his style, puts forward many new theses, be it economic development or managing the polity or the expansion of our foreign policy perceptions. Though his political legitimacy and credibility is at a discount, the man has been discharging his obligations, in the given context, in an exemplary manner, to use…