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Commentary
Ashok Mitra

Ashok Mitra, the former finance minister of West Bengal, is a well known economist.

The hoopla is over
'Of the 925 medals won in the Sydney Olympics, India's share is just one -- 0.1 per cent of the total -- and that too, a measly bronze. Would it be unkindness to remind ourselves that, in stark contrast, we constitute almost 20 per cent of the world's population?'

Invest in a dream
'FDI, still shy of India, may not turn out to be the magic key to prosperity.'

Nowhere to go but down
For multinationals, skilled IT professionals are available a-plenty in India at very low wages. However, once these graduates hike their supply price, MNCs will turn to other nations. If this happens, it could lead to a declining growth rate, encompassing agriculture and industry.

Home and the world
'In the changed economic and political situation in the country, foreign and domestic relations are in danger of coming to clash with each other, leading to confusion in the formulation of basic issues in both arenas.'

Monopoly equilibrium and all that
'The Microsoft story is a setback for those who have strongly invested in the new horizon. Bill Gates will not be allowed to exploit the possibilities of the free market to the hilt. The US administration has inserted a spoke in its standing legislation; untramelled human endeavour, howsoever brilliant, is out. The freedom of one cannot impede the freedom of the multitude.'

Patriotism is not enough
'The debate on the Union Budget proceeds along predictably wrong lines. Basic issues are not allowed to raise their heads. For instance, no MP or political party will have the temerity to draw attention to the glaring fact that were the defence budget be reduced by as little as even five per cent, some resources could then be made additionally available for poverty alleviation and other such programmes.'

Private sector is no angel, so govt has business to be in business
'Through liberalisation and privatisation in the early '90s, the Russian economy all but collapsed. The great Russian people have transformed themselves into a nation of blackmarketers and pimps. The privatisation process in India could have even worse consequences.'

The hero as anachronism
'Under the World Bank and IMF, the colonials returned as development advisors of various descriptions. They prevented the Nyereres and Mugabes to coalesce in order to build self-reliant bridges reaching out to a prosperous golden future.'

  • Let's forget 1962
  • Let go of Kashmir!
  • Sleaze World
  • Privatise railways, and spread anarchy!
  • The Budget is no longer FM's prerogative; it will come from the US
  • Deals within deals
  • Liberalisation as an acid that eats away at the moral fibre
  • Delicately poised: open market in one pan, political and social costs in the other
  • Onion crisis may be a precursor of a 'grand' future
  • Bear eat bull world
  • Diversity in unity
  • States' reckless borrowing from international FIs is laden with risk
  • Vajpayee government's economic advisory council: Not a conclave of economists
  • Indian patriotism is now judged by the extent of one's expressed abhorrence for the LTTE
  • E M S's final message was that there can be no collaboration with the Congress
  • National integrity can be ensured only by coming to terms with a permanent state of dishevelment
  • If we do not have the courage to praise Iraq, we should at least have shame at our cowardly behaviour
  • An economically weak nation cannot but cut a sorry figure if it presumes to take charge of the affairs of the world
  • Even in this late state, if we go back to a sensible regime of controls and regulations, we can still escape the fate that has struck the erstwhile Asian Tigers
  • The choice of members for the Prasar Bharati board betrays sectarianism of the worst order, as if New Delhi is India and India is New Delhi
  • People with empty stomachs and without jobs will not take the excesses of the free market lying down
  • Principles be hanged, ordinances are forever
  • Anachronisms are just that, why waste space even to report their demise?
  • The agenda of national integrity has been substituted
    by the politics of coalition

  • Saving the Budget was thought to be such a national necessity
    that short-circuiting the Constitution was regarded as no sin

  • Bihar farmers need SPG cover more than certain New Delhi VIPs
  • Making the agenda
  • It is as if those who argue against the reforms
    are agents of an alien, evil ideology, and it would
    be less than patriotic to offer them space

  • An ambience of hypocrisy tinged with cowardice
  • Hope is a many splendoured thing
  • The poor are simply not on the agenda
  • Seeking the help of the helpless
  • Demanding pointless increases in defence spending
    is the first refuge of the patriotic scoundrel

  • The long arm of the patent laws
  • Of elections, haut couture, crime and venality
  • Liberalisation, far from giving India prosperity,
    has only produced a skewed morality

  • The seven about-to-vanish sisters of the North-East
  • Governments fight shy of bringing loan defaulters to book
    because it goes against class interests

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