Passionate About India

When I came across the Global Gender Gap Report, published this year by the World Economic Forum, the London School of Economics and Harvard University, I was not at all surprised, as the state of women in our society is no secret. On earlier occasions, through my editorials and columns, whenever I had strongly asserted the fact that the state of a majority of common Indians with respect to social parameters like education, health and sanitation is poor, it actually meant that for the common Indian woman, the state is even more alarming. To the uninitiated, it might sound a tad exaggerated, but then numbers justify themselves. The Global Gender Gap Report, 2006, puts India at a rank of 98 out of 115 nations. It is a matter of shame that India is the only democracy of some repute (!) to secure a place so low in the report. On each and every social, economic and political account, women in India not only score much less than the Indian male, but also less than the underprivileged Sub-Sah...

On 5 March, when the Chinese Premier gave a landmark speech in the Chinese National People’s Congress, it marked the beginning of the third path-breaking era for China, the first being the 1949 Revolution led by Mao, and the second when the economic reforms started after Mao’s death. So what was special about Wen Jiabao’s speech? Well, this time the Chinese Premier assertively put across the vision of growth with equity. The vision of growth with equity is commendable, more so for China as there is no other country (forget India!) in history that has pulled as many people out of poverty in the last three decades. It is just because of this that in the last 30 years, China came from nowhere to become the epicentre of global economy. Today, it is impossible to imagine global economy without China. She has made herself completely indispensable by making almost everything affordable to the middle and lower middle class populace of the world through the gigantic production machinery of the ...

My immediate reaction, after hearing the Union Budget speech by our honourable Finance Minister (FM) was that this budget should not get more than 2 on a scale of 10. The reason? It was an extremely rare opportunity that a Finance Minister would have everything going in his favour while going to present his budget and yet it turns out to be a damp squib for every stakeholder of the economy. The fact is that Indian economy has been growing consistently by more than 8% for quite a few quarters now. The forex reserve stands at an all time high of around $188 billion, merchandise exports are on the verge of crossing the magic figure of $125 billion. Yet our FM found it difficult to garner all the courage to go ahead with a path breaking budget. Understandably the reasons for such sub-standard budget has nothing to do with the future of the economy but was intended towards the prospects of the United Progressive Alliance in the forthcoming elections. Amazingly, it miserably failed here too ...

India, for all the hype of being the second fastest growing economy of the world, with one of the largest foreign exchange reserves, still remains among the bracketed nations where having a decent home remains an elusive dream for millions. In most of the metropolitan cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengalooru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune and even Kolkata, the price of having a decent dwelling today is beyond the reach of the common man. At times, rationale fails to justify the reasons for such an exponential price rise. The prices of apartments and stand-alone houses have shot up by 60% and 50% in Delhi and Mumbai in the last couple of years. In places like Dwarka, on the outskirts of Delhi, the price of a 900 square feet apartment in 2002-03 was around Rs 10-14 lakh. Today, the same apartment costs nothing less than Rs 60-70 lakh. By any standards, these prices are no way affordable for the teeming millions who constitute India’s middle class. As such, there is a huge shortage of houses in I...