More in
-
The continuing relevance of Dandi
There’s a sound moral and economic case for tax evasion in India, argues Ranjan Sreedharan, and yes, he’s serious. Without being a history person, my own sense is that Mahatma Gandhi’s 1930 march to Dandi was more symbol than substance. The act of refining salt from seawater without paying the...
-
Last Word on Thatcher
I lived in New York for two years in the mid-nineties, between 1995 and 1997 to be precise. When I look back upon those years, I see a stay divided into two distinct and equal periods; the first year when I was not a member of the Metropolitan Museum of...
-
India’s Middle Path Fallacy
For much of our existence as an independent country, India has been a nation in collective denial. For years we were in denial of the harsh truth that despite initial pains, India has a lot more to gain from more open markets and less intrusive government than the path it...
-
Those socialism jokes…
Once upon a time, back in school and college, I was a socialist. No, that won’t do, because it does not tell the full truth in all its acute gravity. The truth is—I am over with it, so the truth can be told—I had actually become a communist. Passionate, unyielding,...
-
America’s Secret Competitive Advantage is a Dirty Secret
Abstract The noted management guru Michael E Porter identifies seven unique competitive advantages for the U.S. economy to explain the country’s pre-eminence, ranging from its environment for entrepreneurship, its institutions of higher learning, its technology and innovation machine, to its commitment to competition and free markets. In this article, I...
-
The economics of Moore’s law: A test and a corollary
A TEST AND A COROLLARY The Moore’s Law compatibility test can safely predict the future Superpower of the world. However, it throws up a surprise. The Chinese economy remains fundamentally incompatible with Moore’s Law and therefore cannot expect to topple the U.S. from its position of dominance. As for India,...
-
Moore’s law and the unraveling of the Soviet Empire
An important reason why life has changed so dramatically for so many of us, and in such a short span of time, is the spectacular progress achieved in the field of computers and information technology. In 1965, Geoffrey Moore predicted (in words to the effect) that every two years, there...
-
Inclusive Loot: The Dark Side of Inclusive Growth
In two recent posts on Centre Right India, I’ve argued against the idea, and the economics, of inclusive growth. Events in India (recent and beyond) suggest there’s another facet to this debate. Is all the cant about inclusive growth a mere façade for “inclusive loot” by a class of self-serving...
-
The Sham Economics of Inclusive Growth
As an idea, inclusive growth has a powerful resonance to it. It tugs at our heartstrings in ways that make us fall in line as adoring and unquestioning believers. We are happy that it makes us happy, because we feel this glow in our hearts which, in and of itself,...
-
The Fallacy of Inclusive Growth
Underneath the warm glow it evokes, is there more to the idea of “inclusive growth” than meets the eye? Can inclusive growth ever deliver on its promise of rapid growth with real, out-of-turn benefits for the poor, or is it another pie in the sky, in the way our fixation...
-
India’s self-hating Left-Liberals
This post is about the class of left-liberals in general, and the ones in India in particular, because these days they are the ones who call all the shots. In essence, left-liberalism is an economic world view that starts off by beating one’s chest and wailing out loud because there’s so...
-
The Chandrasekhar Limit Applied to Populist Economics
The Indian-American astrophysicist Dr. S. Chandrasekhar first proposed what is now called the Chandrasekhar limit. It says that stars that are 1.4 times and more than the mass of the sun would end up as Black-holes because the increased gravitational pull at this point would force it to collapse into...
-
Between BPL And APL,The Need For An AAPL
With echoes from the controversy over the Indian Planning Commission’s definition of the poverty line still to die down, it’s a good time to point to a flaw in our wider discourse on poverty and development. Having arrived at a poverty line, we then recognize only two relevant classifications— below...
-
Bush, Manmohan and Katrina Moment
Around the time the Indo-US nuclear deal was finalised, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared a platform with George Bush and declared that the people of India loved George Bush. It was an exaggeration. More likely, he was speaking for himself. Since then, a lot of things have happened, and the...