Rama, Modi vs India, Bharat

"Lord Ram’s credos emphasised the sixteen noble qualities of life—unconditional, righteous, assertive, grateful, truthful, steadfast, charismatic, emancipative, thoughtful, capable, presentable, spiritual, dreaded, radiant, admirable and calm, All of this together made him the ideal Maryada Purushottam. These Shodasha Kalyana Gunas, as they are known in Sanskrit, define the human way of living that transcends boundaries making it globally relevant. The Ram temple movement had its own sixteen dimensions due to its religious, social, cultural, spiritual, anthropological, philosophical, judicial, liberal, historical, local, regional, national, global, geographical, mercurial and political contours". More here.

It wasn’t until Sonia took over the Congress that such cooperation became impossible. The current political polarisation started with her. But paradoxically that has worked in favour of the BJP! More here.

An Ode to the doctor’s scribble

"Hindu Resurgence in India That Is Changing"

New Discussion about GDP of India

As in the past, there is a heated discussion about the new method of arriving the GDP of India in the last few years.

Here are some of the reading to ponder it wisely:

The great Indian GDP debate, explained in five charts

Subramanian fails the smell test no less than India’s GDP data by Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar

Arvind Subramanian’s attempt to estimate GDP instead of explaining it through cross-country regression fraught with problems by Bibek Debroy

GDP estimation: System not perfect, but it’s better than one based on annual surveys by Bibek Debroy

Passing the tax smell test by Harsh Gupta

Ex-CEA Arvind Subramanian Has Junked Not Only GDP Data, But Also Monetary And Fiscal Policy Wonks

Prof Bibek Debroy's Major Translations of Ancient Indian Literature

Prof Bibek Debroy is a liberal economist turned translator of ancient Indian literature

His interview and discussions are very interesting and crystal clear in terms of explain the layman to general public. Here some of those videos

Vivek Agnihotri in conversation with Bibek Debroy

Pallavi Joshi in conversation with Bibek Debroy

Bibek Debroy: Should We Have Lessons From Epics in Textbooks

“I will now give you six different reasons why one should read the puranas and itihasa…

"Everyone knows the story - Manu went to bathe in a river, found a small fish. The fish said ‘save me from the larger fish’, so Manu put it in a small bowl of water. At home, the fish became larger and larger and larger and so on… The simple question then is what was the name of the river and where is that river? The name of the river is Kritamala and it is a tributary of the Vaiga River in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai. And this Kritamala today is a nullah and no one even remembers that it was a river."

“Dharma should never be translated in a very superficial kind of way in English because in different contexts it means completely different things.

Debroy has translated the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata (10 volumes), Harivamsha, the Valmiki Ramayana (3 volumes) and the Bhagavata Purana (3 volumes). He is now working on a translation of the Markandeya Purana.

good reading

New socialism in India

Hazlitt’s Way to Will Power

Let the good times roll

The mainstream remains clueless about F A Hayek in India

the strongest had fenced off plots of land for themselves and forced the weak to acknowledge the right of private property. 

Prof Bibek Debroy on Speculating and hoarding and making them legal by nuuy state

Why more IITs are bad idea for Modi government

Why do bad for the nation?

"Some of the issues, such as the right to property, have been on the files for three decades and require examination by a bench of 15 judges."

"Freely available and properly formatted government data could be the second plank towards a “transparent state”. In the 10th Five Year Plan, the government had declared its intention to make publicly available most of its data—but this has not been achieved yet. The idea was that the Indian state should be a “SMART” (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible, Transparent) one."

"I think when posterity judges this period it will judge it as exactly like the end of 1960s and mid 1970s. Having said that, at least under UPA  1, things got done."

Direct Cash Transfers: What Money Can Buy

Socialist MMS and others

"But did MMS have firm convictions about market-based systems? He never did, at least before he took the FM’s job in 1991. There is evidence in his PhD thesis (published as a book in 1964), the South Commission report he effectively authored just before becoming FM and his role during Indira Gandhi days, including coining the slogan Garibi Hatao."

"Since the Congress still honours the convention of not naming things after living people, Sonia and Rahul are disqualified. That leaves Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. Roughly 90 per cent of the objects are named after Rajiv Gandhi, 9 per cent after Indira Gandhi, 1 per cent after Jawaharlal Nehru and none after Motilal Nehru. And yes, the manual employment scheme is named after Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and the foodgrain distribution scheme awaits the death of another Gandhi"

Really interesting reading

A policy that cannot be policed by Bibek Debroy. 
An industrialist ponder All that happened over the course of a frenetic weekend!

Shopping in the villages by close relative of late Indian economist V K R V Rao.

Economist Deena Khatkhate's LKMK!

“A bearded man, aged, dressed in nineteenth-century western style, a broad, lapelled jacket with a crumpled necktie of faded colours, with narrow-bottomed trousers reaching up to the knees, landed at Santa Cruz airport one chilly morning in December 1989.” This is Karl Marx. From Mumbai he is sent off by immigration to Kolkata and a mutually unsatisfactory dialogue ensues with CPM leaders." See for more here.

Poverty-wallas, toilet-wallas to LPG cylinder-wallas

Prof Bibek Debory writes quite interestingly on LPGGasnomics in India:


"But not long ago, every time we ran out of a cylinder, there would be a problem. We were told there was a norm of no refills for 21 days, which works out to something like 17 cylinders a year.

I understand this quantitative cap no longer exists. However, it is some kind of norm to indicate how many subsidised cylinders you should be entitled to every year, and there is also a proposal floating around that each household should get no more than five subsidised cylinders a year.

If you now milk data on that portal, there should be a tear in every eye. In the year ended May 31, 2012, these are the kinds of numbers we have: Naveen Jindal (369), Hamid Ansari (171), Preneet Kaur (161), Vijay Bahuguna (83), Rajnath Singh (80), M S Gill (79), Maneka Gandhi (63), Suresh Kalmadi (63), Mulayam Singh Yadav (58), Ram Vilas Paswan (49), Sharad Yadav (49), Ashok Gehlot (45), Lalu Prasad Yadav (43), A Raja (47), Sharad Pawar (31) and Jaipal Reddy (26).

You can mess around with the portal for other nuggets. Why did A Raja need LPG cylinders if he was in jail? Is the late Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar dead or alive? How come he still receives 48 cylinders? Isn't there a norm that there can be only one connection per household?
How did Salman Khurshid get two connections and consume 62 cylinders? Isn't there a norm that the same individual cannot get two connections under two names? How did Mayawati get two connections and consume 91 cylinders? Naveen Jindal at the head of the league is symptomatic."


More you can track your own house and your enemies house how many cylinder they get in a year from the website http://111.118.215.211/


After committing significant reporting error on Indian economist Montek, the Tehelka apologises now!! What is the use?


"An earlier version of this story stated, incorrectly, that Pavan Ahluwalia worked for Price Waterhouse Coopers, in London, and that he was appointed by them to work on a project to privatize the Delhi Jal Board. Mr. Ahluwalia has never worked for Price Waterhouse or lived in London. He worked as a consultant to the Government of Delhi on a project to undertake institutional reform of the Delhi Jal Board, and was not involved in any discussions or decisions to related to its proposed privatization. The story also quoted Arvind Kejriwal as saying that the Delhi Jal Board project was initiated by the Department of Economic Affairs, when Mr. Montek Ahluwalia was Secretary (Economic Affairs). Online records of the correspondence between the World Bank, the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD), and the DEA, however, show that Mr. Ahluwalia was not involved in initiating this project, which was put forward by the Chief Secretary of the GNCTD The DEA was simply playing its nodal role, as the agency responsible for forwarding state requests for World Bank assistance, and this involvement was at the level of Additional Secretary V Govindrajan.


Tehelka regrets these errors, which have unfortunately been carried in the print edition. We apologise to Mr. Ahluwalia for the inconvenience this has caused. The error will be corrected in the next print edition as well. http://www.delhijalboard.nic.in/djbdocs/reform_project/docs/docs/doc_project_prep_docs/pdf/correspondence/27_04_1998.pdf" 

Interesting reading

Bibek Debroy on "We stupid brutes": "I have some money in my wallet.  A thief comes along and steals some of it.  For most people, the reaction should be one of anger.  The anger should remain, even if it is somewhat muted, if the thief explains this theft has been done because that money has to be donated to the poor.  This is not as bizarre a metaphor as one might think, because that’s precisely what has happened since 2004." 


Niranjan Rajadhyaksha on "Returing to the age of Ranade": "The quest to build a modern India began in those decades, and the early university graduates and progressive rulers such as Sayajirao were umbilically linked to this quest. India in the last decades of the 19th century was akin to Europe in the years of the Renaissance— rediscovering its roots as well as yearning for a modern future."


Anjuli on "Hold them accountable": Why is this a big deal? After all, any corporate hospital offers the same facility. The big deal is that one, the facility at Gudiyattam is free (private hospitals, on the other hand, charge a hefty fee). Two, the facility is available across 220 government hospitals and the same unique registration number can be used at any one of these to access a patient’s medical records.

Arvind Panagariya on "A forgotten revolutionary": "We are determined to address the problems of the economy in a decisive manner," Rao said in his stoic voice. "This government is committed to removing the cobwebs that come in the way of rapid industrialisation. We will work towards making India internationally competitive, taking full advantage of...opportunities offered by the evolving global economy...We also welcome foreign direct investment so as to accelerate the tempo of development, upgrade our technologies and to promote our exports. Obstacles that come in the way of allocating foreign investment on a sizable scale will be removed. A time-bound programme will be worked out to streamline our industrial policies and programmes to achieve the goal of a vibrant economy that rewards creativity, enterprise and innovativeness." 

Why I say, its must read?

Below are two articles which are by all means must read. One on cartoon textbooks and the other one is on why Indian economists don't understand the law.

• "Indian cartoonists take this irreverence and turn it around in various ways till we arrive at Independence and the British depart, leaving mostly home-grown targets for our cartoonists to aim at." More here.

• "When the history of the Indian economy is written twenty years down the line, we will look back at the 2004 to 2014 decade as one that was just as damaging as mid-1960s to mid-1970s, if not worse, because the world has changed.  As was the case during that earlier decade, contrary views are not encouraged and are marginalized.  Advisers, bureaucrats and economists flow along with the tide.  That’s partly because views of many people are malleable.  That’s a requisite trait for survival." More here.

Planned chaos or planning for chaos

Indian Economist Bibek as I expected! says “I wish press releases by Planning Commission were better drafted." In fact, there is a lack of skill for drafting important communication with general public in India in public interest. See yourself the press release of PC, utterly...the very first para. This one was after damage.

 From IE editorial 19 MPs kill a Budget.

Retail polity

In the on going debate on FDI in retail sector, even the so called liberals are grouped in different camp. If you  glance through the following pieces you will get to know what I meant so called liberals. But the fact is that Walmart is not the only guy who is going to stay here for long, after all the king of competition is going to help us  in improving our life style. These pieces in my view are must read, if at all you bother to get some concrete view about why we should or should not allow FDI in retail sector in India.

Market economy or market society by S.Gurumurthy

Exploring pros and cons of FDI in retail by Bibek Debroy

The party of no principle by Surjit S Bhalla

Economists rarely blame fellow-economists for the bad advice they gave.

“Rare is the economist or adviser who adopts acontrarian position and like Shenoy in the 1950s, such economists areostracized and shunned.”

" Meanwhile, kirana stores in many citiesdevised new methods to stay competitive. Many of them installedair-conditioning, created aisles, introduced trolleys, computerised billing andstarted accepting credit cards. Not only that, the traditional stores stockproducts relevant to their neighbourhoods—sticking to packaged foods in areaslike Bangalore with its tech workers, but adding gourmet foods, wasabi paste,morels, refried beans and the likes to cater to the upmarket residents of, say,south Mumbai. On top of that, kirana stores formed groups in many cities togain better bargaining power with distributors and offered discounts toconsumers."

The CCT mania

• This doesn’t mean CCTs are a bad idea. Far from it, and several countries, including developing ones in Asia and Latin America, have successfully experimented with CCTs. Especially in education, there are also experiments with education vouchers in more than one state. However, what is the Nandan Nilekani task force going to examine? Is it a cash transfer or is it a voucher? From the nomenclature of the task force, we are talking about a cash transfer. But let’s think of a voucher first. A voucher offers choice, competition and efficiency. However, exercise of vouchers requires existence of choice on the supply-side. One can’t use food stamps if there is only one PDS shop within a radius of 10 km. Yes, supply-side responses occur, but they don’t occur instantly. 

• Moving on to cash transfers, if they are conditional, they are de facto not that different from vouchers and there will be universal resistance (on several counts) if we move on to unconditional cash transfers. On CCTs, shouldn’t we learn from what is now acknowledged to be a mistake, making NREGA payments mandatory through banks and post office accounts? That required a level of financial inclusion we don’t have. If we wish to successfully introduce CCTs, those pilots should be in so-called elitist and urban areas, where delivery is less of a problem. 

(From Bibek’s article on Saving a good idea)

The original notification of Task Force for Direct Transfer of Subsidies on Kerosene, LPG and Fertiliser to Individuals/Families Constituted is here.

Evolution of migration, not birds alone but human too

Economist Bibek Debroy told some basic facts about his grand parents, parents and sons story of migration, beside his own in the EFN Asia Conference. I learned a great amount of knowledge from his brief talk. I also asked some basic questions and he firmly answered. The extended story has now been published in an article last week in the Indian Express. It is interesting to read. In fact, I always wondered what would be my own story after reading Prof.Deepak Lal’s own story.   

The age of foolishness or slaves of defunct economists

• To go back to Dickens, it was also the worst of times. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the winter of despair. “In economics, there is no accountability for the consequences of your advice. And that is particularly so in an ascriptive society like India.” Jagdish Bhagwati said this and this is relevant because today’s policy-making environment is increasingly harking back to the late 1960s to mid-1970s, policies that led India to losing two development decades. It is fashionable to blame policy-makers for what went wrong then. But one tends to forget that those policy-makers were, to quote Keynes, slaves of defunct economists. We had the Hazari Committee report in 1967, Dutt Committee report in 1969 and the Wanchoo Committee report in 1971. We also had the Dagli Committee report in 1978. There were several such committee reports.

• It was economists who were important in policy-making who drew the wrong conclusions from Hazari/Dutt/Wanchoo and ignored Dagli. Without naming them, they have never quite been held to task. On the contrary, they have been rewarded with awards. In simple terms, what did those policies do? They restricted supply and made India a shortage economy.

• Post-1991 policies removed supply bottlenecks, where reforms were introduced. We now have a situation where policy-makers don’t know what is driving either growth or inflation. On inflation, we were earlier told it would slow down, hopes riding on the base effect. The base effect is wearing thin, and food price inflation shows no signs of easing, because agri-products are still supply-constrained. The finance minister, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the Chief Economic Adviser have now told us inflation is a good thing, because it is reflective of higher growth and greater demand in rural areas.

• How about including policy-making economists within the ambit of the proposed Public Services Delivery Act, making them liable for the opportunity costs of lost economic growth? 

From Bibek’s Wonky policy wonks.

The government is the problem, not the solution bank

Bibek on....... the MGNREGA is already distorting the labour market. The way it has been constructed, it was probably deliberately intended to do so.

Aruna Roy on: The government will not have any moral authority to implement the Minimum Wages Act when it is itself a defaulter. It also opens the door to any other legislation over-riding the minimum wage and creating conditions of forced labour.

Democracy and insurgents in modern India

That is how I could think of after reading T K Arun’s article in today’s ET. Some questions posed by him are really needs for deeper thinking. Some excerpts: 

• In every nook and corner of India, some priest or preacher routinely extols verses from the Bhagavad Gita, in which none other than Lord Krishna urges Arjuna to perform violence in pursuit of dharma. Should this call to violence invite the wrath of the state?  

• How should the state treat a Maoist sympathiser, one who does not take part in or abets any violent activity, but articulates empathy with the Maoist cause?  

• Yet democracy had little meaning in large swathes of India, where extremely unequal distribution of assets and social power made a mockery of the Republic’s promise to remove poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.  

• Members of India’s aboriginal tribes belong to this category , for the most part. And they have been mobilised by the Maoists, citing not just failure of the state to protect them from oppression but also the state’s role as primary oppressor , usurping their land and restricting their means of livelihood.  

• All those who fail to act to secure movement towards the democratic ideals of the Constitution are, in reality, enemies of the people, and of the state, if the state is truly of, for and by the people. 

• The aim of the state should be to resolve conflict, not wreak vengeance. So, the option of a negotiated settlement is always open for the state, should the Maoists give up violence. 

But for the court verdict one should give thought to professor Bibek’s article.

F A Hayek, RTE and Voucher

Take education as a test case. Several states have education vouchers, with differing conditions. Uttarakhand has Pahal, with a stipulation that there cannot be a government school (or Education Guarantee Scheme centre) within 1 km of the habitation. Rajasthan has two separate schemes — Gyanodaya Yojana (where new secondary schools are set up by the private sector and state-funded vouchers are used) and Shikshak Ka Apna Vidyalaya (where trained and unemployed teachers set up schools in backward areas and vouchers are used). It is early days, but Uttar Pradesh proposes vouchers for poor students who wish to study in English-medium schools. Madhya Pradesh has a scheme known as Paraspar, where Rs 3,000 is transferred to private schools for students from economically weaker sections. There are pilot schemes in Delhi too. One way to interpret the RTE Act is that the government has recognised the public education system cannot deliver. Girls in Bihar wear uniforms and ride bicycles, but still mostly to government schools. The reason is that private schools still don’t exist. That’s because there are serious entry barriers to setting up private schools. Once roads are built and such licensing restrictions eased, the moral of the bicycle story is that one should transit towards education vouchers. But, as mentioned earlier, the RTE Act doesn’t ease licensing restrictions. It makes them tougher.

Fifty years ago, Friedrich Hayek wrote a book titled The Constitution of Liberty. This is what it said:

“It would now be entirely practicable to defray the costs of general education out of the public purse without maintaining government schools, by giving the parents vouchers covering the cost of education of each child which they could hand over to schools of their choice. It may still be desirable that government directly provide schools in a few isolated communities where the number of children is too small (and the average cost of education therefore too high) for privately run schools.”

(From A bicycle built for many by Bibek Debroy)