Kaushik Basu, the current Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, had a 15-year-long stint as Professor of Economics at Cornell University. The Padma Bhushan awardee has been working closely with the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister to chart the country’s future growth path. He spoke to MANAV CHOPRA about the need for better monitoring to ensure growth doesn’t happen at the expense of social justice. Excerpts: A common...

The right to development is not a right to pollute.  As the debate over India's climate change strategy continues, it is necessary to address some misconceptions about climate equity that are evident in recent pronouncements of the Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, and the writings of his most recent adviser, Dr. Arvind Subramanian. A solution to climate change, even an inequitable solution, has to address our planet's energy...

“Wherever there is a lamp, there is darkness below it,” said Bava Bhalekar, a fisherman and local leader in this village roughly a hundred miles south of Mumbai. “The tragedy is that while our village has this project, we ourselves don’t have electricity.” “This project” is the power plant that Enron built. A decade after Enron withdrew from the project, the Indian government and two Indian companies are promising to...

The alarm bells are ringing right below our feet. Delhi and portions of Rajasthan falling in the National Capital Region (NCR) extract almost double the amount of groundwater than is recharged every year. The situation is equally bad in NCR portions of Haryana, particularly Gurgaon and Faridabad, which largely depend on groundwater. A status report on groundwater by the NCR Planning Board (NCRPB) reveals that the water table in Delhi...

Caste is feudal, the market free and equal. Correct? Ask Ratan Lal Sirswal or Deepak Jatav. Sirswal, 75, had started off as a sweeper but is now one of the oldest businessmen in Panipat, Haryana. He quit his sweeper’s job once his handloom unit was on its feet. His success, he says, came largely because he hid the fact that he was born a Valmiki Dalit. Customers who discovered his caste origins...