December 30, 2011 India is fast becoming like Pakistan a society where bizarre conspiracy theories are plausible, credible, even highly probable. We no longer blame the CIA for floods or outbreaks of dengue. But there is reason to believe that the political process is being manipulated to ensure sinister outcomes that are not apparent. On […]
December 9, 2011 Family narratives are central to great novels. Natasha Rostov’s overwhelming need to run away with a rake, Elizabeth Bennet’s fascination for the rascally Wickham, Jane Eyre’s insane rival imprisoned in a secret loft images of struggles and tensions within families have kept a lot of us awake and excited over the years. […]
November 25, 2011 When the Olympics were held in this country’s capital city, great care was taken to put on a show to impress foreign visitors. Dissidents were picked up and taken away from the city. Unwanted and protesting ethnic minorities were kept under surveillance. All citizens were instructed to keep smiling to convey the […]
October 18, 2011 Media pundits are having a great time taking swipes at the building projects of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Self-appointed fiscal hawks are critical about the waste of tax payers money. Self-appointed defenders of the poor keep harping on the fact that the money could have been spent on education or […]
September 30, 2011 Macro-economics is an inexact discipline if we didn’t know that earlier, now we do. The political economy of managing financial crises is even more fraught with uncertainties and unpredictable outcomes. We think we know why the Great Depression was so devastating and why it lasted as long as it did. Banks were […]
September 10, 2011 Airports have become even more impossible than before. Long queues and lots of new scanners. The scanner industry is certainly a great beneficiary! There may be a great deal of unemployment among factory workers and real-estate salespersons. But the tribe of security guards has increased. Every building in Mumbai has almost as […]
December 22, 2009 More than founding Mphasis, I am proud of its sale, noted Jerry Rao, former CEO of Mphasis, at the TiE summit, on Monday. Rao felt his decision to sell the company was the right one. The company stock prices shot 3.5 times following the sale. By adding the right value and getting […]