There is a strong state-wise dimension to India's poverty question, and the first answers have to come from the governments of the concerned states.
India should not allow millions to suffer the ill effects of a drought because of official apathy or sluggishness, says T N Ninan.
Forget all those theories about the passive, fatalist Indian, long peddled by commentators, both home-grown and foreign. If recent survey data are to be believed, Indians are among the most optimistic people on earth, and this is true of consumers, investors, business managers. . . the whole spectrum.
The problem in India is that much of the cost of the roof over your head is on account of the land beneath your feet--which has been kept hopelessly expensive by the politician-builder nexus.
They said this round was the 'semi-final', and that the finals in 2014 would be between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi. The two men campaigned more than any other party leaders in their respective camps. On both sides, there were enthusiasts who could not wait. Some in the Bharatiya Janata Party declared Mr Modi a prime ministerial candidate while the campaigning was still on, as though L K Advani was already history; and businessmen hastened to sing his praises.
When you think about it, it is scarcely believable. A large, scandal-hit company has found a buyer without presenting up-to-date accounts, and despite the fact that its previous accounting statements were largely fiction.
Publishers who turn out between 100 and 250 titles in a year would be quite pleased if they managed to sell 2,000-3,000 copies of any particular release. In fact, tomes written for the academic world have print runs that often stop at 600. The good news is that the big books are coming out more frequently, and there is greater variety. The reason is not just a flowering of Indian creativity in English, or the arrival of quality writers, though both are of course true.
India might benefit from not having globalised as much as the others.
The economy keeps chugging along on the back of massive international borrowing, on a scale that is generally recognised as unsustainable. As a consequence, it has an abysmal savings-GDP ratio.
The sole economic superpower does not want to dethrone the dollar, or for that matter practise Third World economics.
Re-constructing what Mr Raju did, that was the key shortcoming in his plan for grand larceny. The more you think of what has happened to Satyam and its jailed chairman, the more obvious it becomes that the problem was the failure to realise that while he might get away with stealing eggs, the goose itself should not be killed.
The government's statistical system is being overhauled with painful slowness. The base years for the indices are too far back in time, the weights for different sub-sets are out of date, the methods of data collection are defective, and the statistical methods used simplistic.
The world is not about to change just because some people get angry and call for tax boycotts. Indeed, citizens seem to be quite happy with the governments they have -- three of the five that went back to voters have got re-elected, and the voting percentages have been large.
The first step would be to understand that the system's failures when it comes to preventing terror strikes are symptomatic of failures elsewhere in the government; the real problem is the government's increasing incapacity to function.
Our failures are the failures of our leaders. But none of them ever pays the price. Or offers his head.
If you look at the broad numbers, industrial growth in the first five months of this year was 5 per cent, compared to 10 per cent a year earlier. As for next year, the International Monetary Fund has in the space of a month lowered its forecast from 6.9 per cent to 6.3 per cent -- a range where perhaps only one Indian forecaster has dared to tread so far.
We forget that, three months ago, the over-riding economic problem in India was inflation. So the good news is that the tide has turned.
If the Bank's numbers are wide of the mark, they will make a difference to the poverty debate.
India recognised the right to strike in its Industrial Disputes Act of 1947, but this law is confined to 'industries'. There was a time when the term was extended by the courts to mean even universities and hospitals, but more recently the Supreme Court held that government employees could not go on strike. The International Labour Organisation has some conventions on the subject.
Everyone is familiar with the fact that governments and developers have taken land prices so high that it makes it very difficult for ordinary working people to afford for themselves even a small flat. But it is those same high prices for land that help subsidise so many infrastructural projects, and indeed make them possible in the cities.
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