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Monday, May 18, 2009 6:46 PM

Bharat and India: A Lesson From Economic History

As the new UPA government prepares to start work, we can expect a fresh round of debates on urban versus rural growth. This paragraph from a recent essay by Robert C Allen, professor of economic history at Oxford University, provides food for thought...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 5 comment(s)
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Monday, April 13, 2009 5:36 PM

Ayn Rand Versus Karl Marx: An Interesting Factoid

"Only in the US and India do searches on Rand beat searches on Marx." That's Eric Crampton on whether people around the world are searching the Internet more frequently for Ayn Rand or Karl Marx --- and what this means. His message to libertarians...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 9 comment(s)
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Thursday, December 04, 2008 8:49 PM

Spend More On Defence: But How?

There is now growing clamour for higher defence spending so that India can fight its war against cross-border terror more effectively. An economist has to ask the inevitable question: where will the money come from? I had raised this issue in a recent...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 5 comment(s)
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Friday, November 14, 2008 7:17 PM

Reverse Migration: Chinese Abandon Cities. And Indians?

The sharp economic slowdown in China has led to factory closures and layoffs. (Note to the CPM: what does that tell you about the state of labour rights in the workers' paradise?) The New York Times has a very good story on this. One part of the story...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 11 comment(s)
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008 1:31 PM

Cold Callers, RIP

Despite the vocal claims of Indian industry about a credit crunch, bank credit is growing at a torrid pace. See latest RBI data here But I suspect that most of this money --- most of the "non-food" part, that is --- is being lent to companies...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 1 comment(s)
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008 9:39 AM

Interest Rate Apartheid

I have never taken the statements that the major business lobbies make on the economy too seriously. Here is a recent example. "Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP and FICCI President today told the Prime Minister at a meeting in New Delhi on the Global...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 3 comment(s)
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Friday, October 24, 2008 9:47 AM

Watching Children Walking To School

To get to Goa, you have to turn off the NH4 and drive east towards the Western Ghats. This is a completely different topography and economy. The roads are terrible. The villages on this route are far poorer than the ones we left behind as well as the...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 2 comment(s)
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Thursday, October 23, 2008 6:50 AM

High On Highways

I drove down to Goa with my family over the weekend --- and could not help once again marvel at the way the national highways progamme has changed the country. It took us a mere five hours to travel from Mumbai to Kolhapur, a distance of around 400 kilometres...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 6 comment(s)
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008 4:38 PM

Paul Krugman --- The Indian Connection

There is no doubt in my mind that Paul Krugman richly deserved the Nobel Prize in economics. The Nobel prize committee usually does a good job explaining in simple English what the prize has been given for. It's no different this year. Read this note...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 16 comment(s)
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008 3:29 PM

Y.V. Reddy has the last laugh

There has been no shortage of Reserve Bank of India detractors. And a lot of the criticism of the central bank has been focussed on its 21st governor, Y.V. Reddy, who stepped down recently. Reddy had been attacked through his tenure for two main reasons...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 5 comment(s)
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Sunday, September 21, 2008 9:00 AM

How The Gale May Blow Through India

The crisis in Western finance has hogged the headlines this month. A lot has also been written and said about how the problems in the US and Europe will affect stock prices here. That's the bird's eye view. It would also be useful to take a worm's...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 5 comment(s)
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Sunday, September 14, 2008 11:50 AM

A Dash of Financial Sector Hypocrisy

T.N. Ninan has written a typically thoughtful piece in Business Standard this weekend. He points to the fact that the US government is merrily bailing out financial institutions while urging other countries to cut regulations of their financial sector...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 2 comment(s)
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Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:27 PM

Give Them Cake ... Sorry, Cash

Mexico has run a social security programme whose success has attracted worldwide attention. The system is called "conditional cash transfers" --- the government transfers cash to poor households who meet certain very simple obligations, such...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | with no comments
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Saturday, August 16, 2008 9:31 AM

iPhone, Nano and Pricing Models

American consumers spent more on fuel than on cars in May and June, says Bloomberg in this story. "Prices of cars, particularly on a quality-adjusted basis, have been trending lower for many years, and the price of gasoline is obviously hugely higher...
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Monday, August 11, 2008 11:35 AM

Data Point: Altamount Road versus Dalal Street

A lot has been written and said about how Altamount Road in Mumbai is among the ten most expensive addresses in the world. This report in the Hindustan Times has an interesting bit of data. "The Mehtas, Shobhana and Virat, who live in the 2,400 sq...
Posted by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha | 1 comment(s)
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