A Tamil economist, the late S. Guhan, used to say that Delhi was a capital in search of a country. I was reminded of that remark during the fortnight of May 29 to June 11, 2011. In that fortnight, if one watched the ‘national’ channels or read the ‘national’ newspapers, one would think all of India was involved in one way or the other with the ideas and practices of...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...

The government is returning to a 1970s mentality. This mentality used a presumptive distrust of Citizens as an excuse for enhancing state power. It sought accountability, not through intelligently designed transparency norms, but greater discretionary power in state officials. And finally, it sought to curb Citizens’ freedoms, not by directly assaulting them, but by embedding them in a structure of regulation that deters free expression. This mentality connects three recent sets...

The joint committee for drafting the Lokpal bill has, among other things, brought much attention to lawmaking itself. What indeed is the process of enacting a law? And what therein are the points of engagement with Citizens and civil society? A government bill may be introduced by a minister, and a private member bill by any member of Parliament. We focus here on government bills, as private member bills have rarely...

On June 12, Ravi Shankar Ratnam helped Ram Krishna Yadav resume eating after Yadav had fasted for a week. This wouldn’t have made the headlines of every Indian newspaper the next morning if it hadn’t been for the fact that both men had achieved a state of demi-divinity through the tried-and-tested process of Hindu name-inflation. Ram Krishna Yadav became Swami Ramdev when he took sanyas and after his extraordinary success...