October 16, 2021 By resurrecting Air India, the present dispensation has finally undone the mistake that we can attribute to Nehru and his advisors. My great-grandfather Singanallur Narayanachar Anandathirtha Rao was a junior employee in the judicial department of the Madras Presidency. Despite not being a college graduate, he managed to get “promoted” by virtue of […]
October 7, 2021 In 1959, my maternal uncle was involved in a “student strike” in the then small town of Mysore. Being a naïve seven-year-old, I asked my uncle as to what the demands of the students were. I was informed that the principal demand was the dismissal of the high-handed police commissioner who had […]
Oct 05, 2021 Free India has ignored Gandhi’s Nai Talim. I have argued that this is a mistake. Nai Talim — with its emphasis on eye-hand coordination, development of motor skills (as explored by Maria Montessori, a friend of Gandhi’s) and implied left brain-right brain balance — actually can set right the excessive focus on […]
Book Excerpt: In Economist Gandhi, An Exploration Of How The Mahatma Grappled With Identity Politics
Oct 02, 2021 The book examines Mahatma Gandhi’s economic philosophy, shedding light on why he needs to be looked at as a management guru. Entrepreneur and writer Jaithirth Rao’s book Economist Gandhi: The Roots and the Relevance of the Political Economy of the Mahatma examines Mahatma Gandhi’s economic philosophy, shedding light on why he needs to be looked […]
Oct 02, 2021 On his return to India, Gandhi could have chosen to settle down in Porbandar, where he was born, or in Bombay, whose citizens seemed inordinately fond of this South African returnee. His choice of Ahmedabad is quite interesting. Porbandar would have cramped him. Firstly, it was too small and too unimportant a […]
Oct 01, 2021 Author Rajni Bakshi writes: “Gandhi’s asceticism in later life tends to obscure the fact that he often reminded people that he is a “vanika putra”, the son of a baniya (merchant).” In another context, Gandhi’s American admirer [and journalist] William Shirer writes: “There was something of the banian trader in Gandhi, reflecting […]
Sep 30, 2021 For the wealthy, Gandhi’s advice was pretty much taken out of the Gospels. Wealth has a seductive appeal. And like all seductive objects, it can be corrosive. Hedonistic excesses, slavish kowtowing to wealth and the serving of Mammon exclusively can result in loss of opportunity to engage with the kingdom of god. […]
September 26, 2021 Books written for students of economics and management make no references to Mahatma Gandhi. The losers are the students. Gandhi, with his encyclopedic range of interests, has much to say that can be treated as complementary to mainstream economics and management theories, or as even an intrinsic part of them. His contributions, […]
September 25, 2021, Churchill is supposed to have referred to Gandhi as a half-naked fakir. The irony is that many Indians have internalized this view. Gandhi is seen as a poverty-loving, spiritual figure out of touch with the so-called hard-headed world and some see him as a supporter of woolly backward ideas. It is time […]
July 16, 2021 The purpose of this article is not to go into the tragic circumstances around the recent death of Father Stan Swamy. While many columns have been written about the tribal rights activist, including one by retired IPS officer Julio Ribeiro in ThePrint, I believe an attempt should be made to look at the […]