December 31, 2015 India missed the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. We did not do that badly in the first half of the 20th century. Textile mills in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore, besides many other places, jute and engineering factories in Howrah, even an advanced steel plant in Jamshedpur (about a half […]
Feb 8, 2015 A couple of months ago, I was attending a Carnatic music concert. My daughter was sitting next to me. The singer announced that the next melody would be Kurai Onrum Illai which was composed by Rajaji. My daughter looked at me and said “How many things did he do? Was he also a composer?” […]
November 4, 2014 Pulitzer-winner Vijay Seshadri is a worthy intellectual and artistic descendant of Melville. Prizes are universally looked down upon by those who have a self-imposed sense of intellectual arrogance. After all, Orwell or Auden never got the Nobel — the best argument in our armoury. But I am now retracting a bit. Prizes […]
Sep 18, 2014 Amartya Sen has made the case that a “great argument” never dies. Even though, on the surface, Arjuna lost the argument of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna’s dissenting views never completely disappeared. They remained as a subterranean intellectual current and frequently reappeared in different temporal contexts. The arguments made in the columns of […]
August 18, 2014 We can easily build toilets. The problem is that our system does not allow for easy operation and usage. Vikram Lal is a prominent and well-regarded businessman. He is one who has proved that by relentless focus on quality, India does have a role to play in the global manufacturing scene. Now […]
June 10, 2014 Tough decisions made by Modi in Year 1 will pay off handsomely in Year 5. Conventional wisdom is that the new government should focus on reducing the fiscal deficit. This writer would like to take a contrarian view. Ronald Reagan ignored the deficit hawks . He went for bold tax cuts and […]
Apr 10, 2014 The noted British historian G. M. Trevelyan observed that “without social history, economic history is barren and political history is unintelligible.” The autobiographical volumes of Prakash Tandon, one of twentieth-century India’s great business leaders, have been hailed as extremely important works of social history. The Times Literary Supplement had this to say about Tandon’s Beyond […]
March 14, 2014 In 2014, Russia began to make a significant renaissance. Tsar Vladimir, of the newly founded Putin Dynasty, finally summoned up the grit, determination and will power of his illustrious forebears from our country’s distinguished past. Tsar Vladimir proved himself a worthy successor of the beloved icons of Russian history For more details […]
January 20, 2014 The government of India, it seems, has decided that factories must not be allowed to come up or to run. Uday Kotak said a few months back, in the course of an interview, that he was amazed that in his new office in Mumbai, not one of the furniture or fixture items […]