Sunday Posts

The relationship between state and enterprise has been at the heart of public policy debate for many years. There was the Nineteenth Century Liberal idea, reformulated in the Twentieth by the Libertarians, that the relationship between the two is necessarily antagonistic: The activities of the State discourage enterprise through regulations, taxes and by subsidising inefficiencies. On the other side, there were the Twentieth century ideas of the Welfare State, rediscovered as the 'Entrepreneurial State' in the Twenty-first, which posited the opposite: That the state and enterprise live in a symbiotic relationship, not just because the State creates the right environment, but also because it can enable the enterprise, by spreading education, improving health and supporting fundamental scientific research. Both are plausible arguments, and adequate empirical and anecdotal evidence can be marshalled to support either. The debate, however, has been deeply ideological, and it ...

An old, dated piece on Kolkata, titled ' Why Kolkata will win in 20 Years ', came to my attention. There are a number of things mentioned in this article that I don't agree with: The statement that Mamta Banerjee represents the moral end of Indian politics may invoke ridicule today, and the stereotype of Bengalis as business-averse and that they would need a Bengali-speaking non-Bengali for saving is mind-bogglingly absurd. But the two key propositions articulated here - that Kolkata is one of the most sustainable of the Indian cities, and that it can be fixed with good governance - are rather self-evident. Of course, Kolkata is home and I am partial, and I shall make no claims to objectivity here. However, the fact that I keep writing about it - and indeed, there are many many people from Kolkata spread all around the world will do the same - proves perhaps that there is more to it than the dirty, dreary, poor city that the place appears to be to a casual visitor....

My particular interest in West Bengal should be obvious: That's home. And, with all my familial and cultural roots firmly embedded, it is unlikely that my quest to be Global makes any difference to this feeling. In fact, the more interconnected my life becomes, I feel more connected to Bengal, even more responsible. It is a chromosome thing, as Amit Chaudhuri may have illustrated, and whatever I do, I can never truly stop caring. This brings me to one of the things I always wanted to do, build a coalition of all the people who care for the place to bring together in a global conversation on what can be, should be done. Indeed, this is not about government and politics - the state's politics remains toxic - but rather a civil society thing. However, as the recent rise of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi has shown, the civil society's moment in political conversation may have come: 2014 and its momentous election may just be the perfect time for all concerned to engage in the conve...

I am writing this from Bhopal: First time in Bhopal, I am stunned by its beauty and serenity. I somehow imagined it to be a provincial town and somewhat of an industrial wasteland, my perspective informed, perhaps, by my adolescent memories of Union Carbide gas leak. Instead, I see a city wrapped around a lovely lake, pleasant weather and mountainous roads. Such 'discoveries', however naive, make up for all the troubles of travel, spending nights at nameless hotels, and irregular patterns of life this entails. But apart from the beauty of this city, I see ambition: The giant malls straddling the city centre not just changing the consumption patterns of the city, but also its social life. The private universities, only a few years old in the province, churning out a new generation of graduates, and international schools forming a new ambitious pattern of parenting. My initial assumption that the new India is being shaped in smaller towns is proving to be accurate, at least ...

India is an ancient land but a modern nation: The battle to define what it stands for is about to begin. It is common in the history of nations, such battles. Despite the lore, nations are neither perennial nor indispensable, it is only a rather modern construct to define the state with cultural traits and organise the society around it. India as a modern nation, which emerged sixty-five years ago out of a retreating British empire, was based on certain ideas grounded in the belief systems at the time of its creation: of a redeeming optimism at the end of great wars and at the beginning of the end of political imperialism, of the triumph for modern science and technology in beating back our Malthusian destiny and expanding our physical capabilities, and of the faith in human freedom. These lofty visions that defined India, and the nations born thereafter, had one crucial drawback: They were aspirational, and ignored the muddy realities of concocted nations emerging out of centurie...

This is exactly how The Economist puts it ( See article ). The significance of this is immense: First time a major international publication is writing off India and blaming it squarely, and rightly, on its leadership. The everyday despondence of the aspirational Indian middle class is now official.  Indian leaders, as The Economist puts it, continues to show 'Brezhnev grade' complacency. There is something in the Indian psyche, which always believes in eventual rise of India as a major world power. This is not about an Indian version of exceptionalism, but more of a manifest destiny, a deeply irrational expectation that this would happen regardless of any efforts as this is 'written'. Deep down, India's leaders seem to believe in this too, and they are blaming everyone else but themselves for the recent slow down. However, a country's economic future, and indeed its global power, is crucially dependent on its leadership. Alan Beattie recounts the story...

It seems that Shiv Sena and RSS are inching towards a full scale ideological battle, as the former is bent on stealing the MNS agenda of ' Mumbai for Maharastrians ' and RSS is scrambling to protect their Hindu nationalist identity. The statement from RSS looks very non- RSS , ' Mumbai is for people from all communities'. BJP is caught in the crossfire - its chief Nitin Gadkari definitely looked lost and short of words and ideas - and does not know how to keep its alliances in Mahastra and Bihar intact at the same time. Despite the chaos, one has to admit that such conflicts are likely to become increasingly common in India. The biggest casualty of such disagreements are going to be the national parties, BJP in this case. However. Maharastra Congress has done itself no favours by stoking up the sentiments in the first place, with a rather naive posturing on taxi drivers requiring to know Marathi, a position from which they had to do a humiliating about-turn...

In the light of the Hatoyama doctrine and the shifting world economics and politics, it is time for us to rethink our plans in India and how this country should develop in the next decade. I am a great believer that India has the potential to develop into a powerful economy, but I do not think this is a given, and a lot will depend on the choices we make with regard to our development model. I am not sure it was about liberalization and that's it, however much the English language press wants us to believe that. It seems that we have caught up this free market credo just after its time has passed - we have a penchant for picking up the doctrines after its sell-by date - and it is important for us to think hard, yet again, on what is right for us. I am not talking about a militant nationalism or old school protectionism, though both of those doctrines may make a comeback in the Western economies real soon. India should not, and I am confident, would not, follow the European and Ame...

I am at it again, after a gap of almost five years, when I am actively searching for a job. This means all the things that come in the package, preparing a CV, posting it on job sites, keeping a watch on job alerts, firing off applications to those positions which remotely match my area of expertise and smarting off after reading through various rejection mails every morning. Despite the disappointments, it is an interesting exercise to do, to get a feel what I am really good at, to study the patterns of rejection letters and infer which one was written with some sympathy and which one was auto-generated, feeling the sense of hope and despair while waiting for some employers who did not say no, overall feeling young again. Also, the interesting thing here is that my heart is not in it, not yet. I am not sure whether I can get back the zeal of sending out 750 applications as I did in the first few weeks after landing in Britain, which earned me 743 straight rejections, 7 interviews and ...