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 […]