-The Business Standard   New climate report means big changes to future agreements Two distinct features set the third report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) apart from its two earlier instalments. First, even as the report points out that governments have not done enough to curb, let alone reverse, the rise in the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), it does not seek to instil a sense of despair....

-The Business Standard     Institutions such as World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) are considered the panacea of all ills that developing countries like India face. Although the amount of money these institutions lend is small, their influence on the economy is high. They continue to be the benchmark for social and environmental policies, good governance, climate change, corruption and so on. A look at some of the reports of these...

-The Economic Times     There is a narrative that the UPA's rule at the Centre led to an economic disaster, especially in the second term. In contrast, Gujarat has prospered, thanks to Narendra Modi's good governance. We have several problems with this. First, through UPA's first term and about halfway into its second, many economic indicators critics like to harp on were much better than those during the NDA days. This is true...

-The Business Standard   The Indian economy certainly has problems. But compared to the rest of the world, we will take ours any day Over the past couple of years, and particularly the past few months, we have become convinced that economists, the intelligentsia, fund managers, foreign brokers, don't read global macroeconomic news. All of the above have castigated the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government for having ruined the economy, causing a massive growth...

-The Hindu   Ideological labels are likely to mislead by channelling the debate into issues of capitalism and socialism and detract from the real problem George Santayana said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Having forgotten the license-permit-quota-raj that enveloped us from 1950 to 1980 and its ‘crony socialism,' many intellectuals, mediapersons and politicians have now discovered ‘crony capitalism.' The license raj consisted of stifling controls imposed on...