In The Media ⁽⁴⁰⁰⁾

Entitled "Equity and Development," the World Development Report (WDR)2006 of the World Bank is a great leap backward in development thinking. Ignoring the lessons of 50 years of experience, it advocates bringing equity to the center stage of development-policy making. The report is not oblivious to the fact that virtually all agree that the central goal of development policy should be to tackle poverty, not inequity.Economic Times October 19, 2005 Entitled "Equity and Development," the World Development Report (WDR)2006 of the World Bank is a great leap backward in development thinking. Ignoring the lessons of 50 years of experience, it advocates bringing equity to the centre stage of development-policy making. The report is not oblivious to the fact that virtually all agree that the central goal of development policy should be to tackle poverty, not inequity. That would be impossible since the slogan “Our dream is a world free of poverty” is prominently displayed on virtually all walls of the opulent World Bank building. But the report contends that the pursuit of equity speeds up the elimination of poverty. “Equity enhances…

Substantive liberalization under the Doha Round is possible but not without developing countries making reciprocal concessions. ECONOMIC TIMES: SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 Pascal Lamy, the new director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has begun to set the agenda for the Doha Round negotiations at the Hong Kong ministerial meeting during December 13-18, 2005. Recognising the vast differences that remain among participants, he has publicly stated what has been known for some time: contrary to the original deadline, the round will not be concluded by December 31, 2005. Instead, Lamy has urged the member countries to forge an agreement at Hong Kong that would bring them two-thirds way to the final agreement. He has proposed the members complete the remaining one-third of the task by the end of 2006. That would still close the round two years faster than the predecessor Uruguay Round and is therefore an ambitious undertaking. Lamy faces a truly uphill task. A relatively recent development that adds to the challenge he faces is the sophistication, organisation and coherence that developing countries have achieved in articulating their demands…

Most analysts agree that India must urgently bring its gigantic fiscal deficit down. The real question is how precisely to do it: through tax hike or expenditure cut? The two remedies have very different effects on aggregate savings and therefore investment.India has to lower its fiscaldeficit and the best way to do that is by both raising tax revenues and cutting expenditure. Dogmatic insistence on just one route to fiscal discipline is ill-advised, says Arvind Panagariya Read full article Most analysts agree that India must urgently bring its gigantic fiscal deficit down. The rare exceptions occur only in the context of the defence of specific, favourite expenditure proposals. For instance, Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the Left parties would sacrifice deficit reduction if it means a compromise on the National Employment Guarantee scheme. Likewise, between higher expenditure on infrastructure and lower fiscal deficit, the Planning Commission deputy chairman would probably opt for the former. But in the broader macroeconomic context, even these exceptions yield to the necessity of deficit reduction. The real question confronting India therefore is how precisely to bring the deficit…

US academics, journalists and entrepreneurs as also visiting senior officials from India have fed the American fears that Indians (and Chinese) are coming in large hordes to take away American jobs. Are they right? Economic Times July 27, 2005 FEAR has big eyes. So goes a Russian proverb. The truth of the proverb is nowhere more apparent than in the American fears that Indians (and Chinese) are coming in large hordes to take away American jobs. US academics, journalists and entrepreneurs as also visiting senior officials from India have consciously or unconsciously contributed to these fears. Harvard Professor Richard Freeman writes that had India, China and the former Soviet Union not entered the world economy in the 1980s and 1990s, the global workforce in 2000 would have been only 1.46 billion. The entry of these countries has added 1.47 billion workers and, thus, cut the global capital-labour ratio to 55 to 60% of what it would have been otherwise. Freeman concludes that this means substantially lower wages for American workers the next thirty years. Journalist Thomas Friedman of the New…

The right strategy for India is to walk on two legs: traditional labor-intensive industry and modern IT. Both legs need strengthening through further reforms; and four specific reforms are of special importance. Read full article Having sustained 6% annual growth since the late 1980s, India is now regarded as an unequivocal economic success. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who visits the White House on Monday, initiated many of the key economic reforms during his tenure as the finance minister in the '90s. But his task remains incomplete. India continues to trail well behind China, which has been growing at the annual rate of 10% since 1981. From an equal level in 1980, per capita income in China today is more than twice India's. The proportion of the population below the poverty line has dropped below 5% in China compared with 26% in India. Though trade has grown rapidly in both countries, it has grown far more rapidly in China. Exports of goods and services grew at the annual rate of 15.2% compared with 10.7% in India. By 2003, China's share in…