#Economic Reforms

Much to the expectation of eurozone pundits, Riga’s April 24 gathering of euro finance ministers made little progress in terms of reaching an agreement for Greece’s comprehensive list of reforms.

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” Several developments related to India call to mind William Shakespeare’s famous line in Julius Caesar.  The first are the tours of the United States undertaken last week by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and Commerce & Industry Minister Anand Sharma, aimed at drumming up […]

Whether he is the new Deng Xiaoping will say much about the contours of the evolving global order My post earlier this week argued that China’s long-term prospects are more uncertain than the conventional wisdom holds.  The country’s new leader, Xi Jinping, is raising hopes that he is the man to tackle the daunting array of […]

Reminiscent of the carefully-choreographed 2008 Beijing Olympics, China’s unveiling on Thursday of the lineup of the new Politburo Standing Committee, its highest leadership body, took every precaution to ensure an orderly transfer of power. Security in Beijing was tightened, shops were ordered to remove fruit knives from their shelves, hotels opened and inspected all stored […]

Whatever Singh’s own faults as a government leader, India’s economic malaise is due to more basic problems. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on the receiving end of a barrage of slings and arrows these days.  The most recent salvo comes from Time magazine, whose Asian edition this week has a cover story labeling him “The […]

We’ll soon find out whether Prime Minister Singh can salvage something positive from his final two years in office A previous post focused on the recent political crisis in Pakistan that resulted in Prime Minister Gilani’s removal and in the process further destabilizing the civilian government as well as complicating efforts to repair spiraling U.S.-Pakistan relations. […]

A broad ambivalence about economic reform prevails in New Delhi   He’s not the real problem My previous post dealt with the mounting criticism of New Delhi’s economic management.  Not too long ago, India was feted as the “New China” and a driving force in the BRICS fraternity.  It was the toast of the 2006 […]

Criticism about New Delhi’s economic management reaches a crescendo Although he claims to have been misquoted, Kaushik Basu, the chief economic adviser at the Indian finance ministry, has only confirmed what has been readily apparent for quite some time.  In Washington last week for the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the […]

I was rather surprised to see a Cuba headline make it to the front page of the New York Times recently. The surprise is not because the placement is unmerited: indeed, such attention is quite timely and relevant. It is due to the fact that Washington still seems to be deaf to all of the changes […]

  Things are not going well for Dr. Singh The contrast could not be starker.  Twenty years ago this week, Manmohan Singh, then serving as finance minister to Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, championed a bold slate of economic reforms that has transformed India in ways few could have imagined back then.  Quoting Victor Hugo, […]

Rather than cast India’s super wealthy as this era’s robber barons or malefactors of great wealth, a more salutary response to renewed concerns about concentrated wealth and influence would be to enact deeper reforms of the Indian state.

The timing could not have been more perfect. A new report by Global Financial Integrity about Illicit Financial Flows from India comes as the perfect topping on the 2G spectrum scam, the Adarsh Housing Scam and the Commonwealth Games. According to the report, India lost approximately $213 billion in illicit financial flows from the country […]