In The Media ⁽⁴⁰⁰⁾

Read full article (with Jagdish Bhagwati) (FT, 12 Jun 2009)

Counter-examples showing non-performers' victory and performers' defeat can hardly invalidate the anti-incumbency hypothesis.Read full articleThe key feature of anti-incumbency is that it strikes at the state level. Counter-examples showing non-performers' victory and performers' defeat can hardly invalidate the anti-incumbency hypothesis. Despite nearly two weeks worth of 24x7 media dissection, two key events related to the election have gone unnoticed. One of these events is a case of a dog that did not bark but for a reason, just as in the famous Sherlock Holmes tale Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle, and the other of a dog that did bark but no one noticed. Consider first the dog that barked but went unnoticed: anti-incumbency. Because the election returned the Congress-led incumbent ruling coalition to power with near-majority votes, virtually all commentators have automatically assumed that anti-incumbency is now dead. But this reflects either a poor understanding of the anti-incumbency thesis or superficial reading of the results.

The Mulayamites have declared war against the computer. Will the electorate reward them? Or will it give them the same treatment the British government gave the Luddites in the early 19th century. Read full article They said Ned Ludd was an idiot boy That all he could do was wreck and destroy He turned to his workmates and said: "Death to Machines" They tread on our future and they stamp on our dreams. (Poet and performer Robert Calvert from his 1985 album Freq) As a part of his job-creation strategy, Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has called for ousting computers whenever human hands can perform the task. This is a brilliant idea. Thus, begin with banks that increasingly rely on computers to maintain customer accounts, prepare monthly statements, match customer signatures and clear inter-bank accounts. In the past, these tasks were performed by human hands and provided valuable employment opportunities to our hard-working men and women. Consider just the impact of the use of computers in cheque-cashing on employment. In the past, this transaction employed multiple workers; one accepted the…

UPA govt's economic team had raised the hope that it will go ahead with economic reforms. But it failed to live up to expectations.Read full article Future historians will, no doubt, applaud Dr Manmohan Singh for his contributions to building a modern economy as finance minister and to freeing India of nuclear apartheid as prime minister. But they will also record the setback to reforms during his tenure as prime minister. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had contested the general election in May 2004 on a pro-reform platform. Therefore, many in the Congress interpreted its defeat as the rejection of reforms by voters. Prospects for reforms under the incoming Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) looked bleak.

Read full article Abstract: The Group of Twenty (G-20) major nations accounting for 90% of the world's gross domestic product, 80% of its trade and two-thirds of its population will meet in London beginning April 2, 2009. They plan to discuss the cooperative steps necessary to bring the current economic crisis to a speedy end. If history is any guide, measures to roll back creeping protection and move the process of trade liberalization forward ought to be high on their agenda. The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs Act of June 1930, which quadrupled the then-effective tax rate on several thousand imported items to 60% and brought swift retaliatory response from the major U.S. trading partners, accelerated the spiraling down of trade flows worldwide. According to the State Department, between 1929 and 1932, the U.S. exports to, and imports from, Europe fell 67% and 71%, respectively. This rapid decline contributed to the deepening of the economic depression.