Articles by Ramesh Ramanathan

Hindustan Times: Mobius Strip  Latest Bye-bye To Bypasses - The government should shed our ‘bypass’ mindset and be innovative about solving our infrastructure bottlenecks...

Urban Conversations - The system is normally good but it is a bunch of unscrupulous individuals who give a bad name it...

Some Election Takeaways - If the elections show anything, it is that politics and government matter, and affect almost everything about our lives...

Open letter to Rahul Gandhi - This year’s election shows political parties as opaque, eccentric institutions run largely by...

The Value of Manifestos - Most candidates standing for elections wouldn’t know a word of what’s in their own party manifesto. But they are useful documents and can help to hold parties accountable if they get to run the government...

Dileep Kumar at the Oscars - A brewing debate is beginning to surface, one that could be more divisive than the anger about the offensive...

26/11: A Different Message - Of the many responses to the pieces I wrote on the Mumbai attacks, one was brutally honest. It came from AB, a Mumbaikar...

Slumdogs and Negative Lists - As the film Slumdog Millionaire graphically depicts in an early scene, the plight of the urban poor can be sickeningly sad. Unfortunately, policymakers believe...

The Tao of Markets - After Isaac Newton wrote his classic Principia Mathematica in the 17th century, our understanding of the physical world expanded tremendously, ...

Awakening and Relevance - The first rays of political awakening are becoming visible. But political relevance? A long, long way away...

A Political Awakening - We ask for a tough state, when we ourselves are a soft people. Most of us are selfish, inward-looking cowards...

A disturbing encounter - Democracy is at stake when one can bribe for everything and can get away with anything

A giant leap for democracy - Barack Obama’s audacious rise from anonymity can inspire billions of people that change is possible

Building urban India- That we really don’t know what India’s urban infrastructure price tag is going to be is a big challenge

Grains in the sandstorm - This is a critical week for the world’s financial markets, as the US Congress debates the $700 billion Paulson-Bernanke bailout package for the US banking system

Marriages and democracy - At the heart of the idea of democracy is the freedom to make choice

Cannonballs and Snowballs - The challenge is to make the incredibly complex wheels of a nation actually start moving, and unleash...

Moral Dilemmas and the Trust Vote- The Prime Minister and Prakash Karat both ended up making significant moral compromises, and will have to live with the choices they made to defend the beliefs they held

Bill Gates and Indian NGOs- India has more than one million NGOs of varying sizes, operating across a vast spectrum of social issues

Notes from New York- The Yale CEO leadership summit is quite unlike the usual and predictably boring networking event

Millions of pandora’s boxes- The issue of power is a complex subject with multiple dimensions.

Fuzzy Electoral Math- In India, “proxy”, or bogus, voting is very high and there is a flourishing market price

On Political climate change- With the Election Commission’s delimitation work, the urban middle class is becoming a political...

Innovation for inclusion-- Microfinance is trapped in a maze of schizophrenic regulations and confusing institutional structures...

A Nation of Hypocrites-How can a nation with so much collective wisdom and spirituality be broken in so apparent a fashion?

India’s PPP Juggernaut-Our urban centres lack an essential rooting, an organic connection between the city and the citizen...

The Urban Voter :A second-class citizen - Our urban centres lack an essential rooting, an organic connection between the city and the citizen...

IPL – Unleashing the Genie - The story of the year—possibly of the decade—has to be the Indian Premier League (IPL). I say this not in the narrow sense of how it will transform the sport of cricket, but in the much broader sense of the enormous impact it is going to have on every facet of life in India.

Grounded at the word go- In the next few weeks, Bangalore will see the unveiling of a new international airport. Billed as India’s first greenfield public-private partnership (PPP) airport, this is a project that has gone through

Elections and Voters’ Lists – the DNA of our democracy - All political parties know about these errors in voter rolls. There is a flourishing market for fake...

The Nano Inspiration - The lessons of design innovation, scale efficiency, vendor networking can help in hundreds of challenges

New financial posers - It’s a potent recipe - take a household name in global financial markets, grill over the heat of a mortgage meltdown, marinate in the mystery sauce of middle-eastern money,

The Bangalore identifiers - Can the city keep alive the softer stuff that made it vibrant; its identity, communities and neighbourhoods?

Fixing the Affordable Urban Housing Conundrum - India has an abysmal story to tell on affordable urban housing. NSSO’s 2002 Survey is revealing: 52,000 slums hold 8 million urban households, representing 14% of the total urban population,

What’s Wrong with our Babus - I have long been a champion of people within government – both bureacrats and politicians - almost to a fault. My views have been shaped by years of deep engagement with “the system”,

Cracking the Cocoon - He came on time to pick me up from the 5-star hotel. Allowing a reserved smile to flit across his face as he took my bags, he asked, “Where to, sir?”

Political Leadership – Change the Definition- It’s impossible to separate Narayana Murthy from Infosys. Or Premji from Wipro. A great corporate leader is measured by the institution he builds. And yet, surprisingly, we don’t apply the same yardstick when we look at our political leaders – pick anyone. What kind of political parties have they built or strengthened?

Vignettes from China - For the past few days, I have been in Dalian, China, for the inaugural meeting of the “Summer Davos”, the second venue for the World Economic Forum, which has so far met exclusively in Switzerland for 30-odd years.

Turning Indian Society Upside Down- Calling ourselves a democracy does not make us one. We still function pretty much as an authoritarian...

Turning Sixty. needed - A National Campaign for Excellence - A few months ago, I was with an international delegation to China, to explore various dimensions of that country's economic story. Our trip took us to the beautiful city of Hanghzhou. One stop was a break-of-dawn visit to a Chinese garden...

Financial Market Turmoil - What's the right question to ask? - The world's financial markets got shot last week by the double-barrel gun of a massive turnaround in risk appetite for corporate credit, and the US mortgage crisis ripping beyond the sub-prime segment. All markets, India included, are bleeding from the wounds...

City Roads – Signposts to our democracy - Our city roads are motifs of our public governance systems; they blur the line between private and public...

Getting rid if the SAAR virus-It would have been comical if it wasn't so sadly disempowering, the telephone conversation that I witnessed between a senior government officer and his boss.

The Dark Lining On The Silver Cloud - Last week, I wrote of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) becoming a dominant force in global markets, a consequence of burgeoning global currency reserves. This week, I want to focus on India’s own reserves: with $200 billion, rising at $1billion a week, we have found our place in the global spotlight, but the glare is getting uncomfortable. Effective response to this trend is a key policy issue for our public finance experts.

The new 800 lb gorilla - May 21st saw yet another story on China, but with a difference: this one has such deep significance that it could reshape the world's financial markets. The country announced a $3 billion investment in Blackstone, one of the world's premier private equity firms. Behind this $3 billion is another $1.2 trillion of governmental reserves - the trickle coming out of the sluice gates of a gigantic dam that could wash away many vessels in the financial waters. The event will have players looking fearfully over their shoulders as they determine demand-and-supply for global assets, wondering how economic nationalism would play out.

Meter down on India's Museums - It's vacation time for our two children, ages sixteen and eleven. As summer rolls around each year, my wife and I worry about how they can be meaningfully occupied. We are working parents, with fairly active travel schedules. While we love the idea of lazy summer days – given our own pleasant memories of boisterous sessions with numerous cousins – the nuclear family has eliminated these options. I guess we have also become more concerned parents – too concerned perhaps? - worrying about the quality of our children's leisure time.

The Sohrabuddin Encounter - It was surreal. I was eleven years old, in the middle of a seemingly normal Deepavali setting – people laughing and playing around me – but I couldn't hear anything. The atom bomb that I had so bravely held in my hand, to light and throw away at the right moment – removing the paper from the wick to be doubly careful – had flared too quickly and burst six inches from my face. Instantly, I lost all hearing and orientation. The predictable normality of everyday life was transformed into a ghostlike tableau for several seconds.

Regulate political parties - Last week's National Anthem fracas saw Narayana Murthy getting roasted by members of the Karnataka State Assembly. While the media hype lasted for two days, what will linger is the subliminal irony of the incident. One of India 's great institution builders got taken to the cleaners by politicians who couldn't spell institution-building if their lives depended on it.

The Courage to Demand More- London 's integrated transport authority Transport for London is looking for a Managing Director, Planning. Their advertisement says, “ Excellent package.

What is the number?-One morning, early in my banking career, a business manager publicly chastised a colleague for what seemed like a fairly minor infraction.

Travel Notes- On a recent family trip to the US and UK, we also got a glimpse of Eritria, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Ghana and Morocco.

The Urban Inflection Point - My first job out of business school was on Citibank's New York trading floor. Armed with my discounted cash-flow logic, I suggested that the market was over-valued.

India – Reaping the Democratic Dividend - I have been an entrepreneur all my life. At 22, I quit college to start a small steel trading firm so that I could get married.

FINANCIAL EXPRESS:

Wicked Problems of Urban Infrastructure - Every aspect of urban life in India is in chaos: building and zoning violations; traffic and transportation problems; intractable slum settlements; poor quality water and sanitation services resulting in health issues.

Two Big Bangs, Two Gaping Holes - One Giant Opportunity - As Mr Narayan Murthy celebrated his 60th birthday two weeks ago, the nation rightfully acknowledged a remarkable leader. While we celebrate his achievements, we can also view Mr Murthy's success through another prism, for lessons on the work that still remains to be done in our country.

Metro Rails – Show me the Money - Mr. Sreedharan, the driving force behind the Delhi Metro, is a living legend - a remarkable engineer with an exemplary track record in building rail systems. He delivered the Delhi Metro on time, within cost, and as an example of how public infrastructure ought to be built. In a country parched for projects that move from conception to delivery with no glitches, he is a shining example of how to do it right..

The Mumbaikar: Honoured Today, Forgotton Tomorrow-Barely 24 hours after the Mumbai bomb blasts, the city had remarkably picked itself up, suggesting defiantly to the terrorists that it would not be cowed down. Although the media didn’t report it, there were many unsung heroes within government.

SEZS What do they Really Mean for India ?- A few weeks ago, the Government of Haryaya signed an MoU with the Reliance Group for an SEZ. The numbers are staggering: 25,000 acres, Rs 40,000 crore investment, anticipated annual returns of Rs 10,000 crores, with a 24% minority stake for the state. A week later, the Mahindra Group signed a similar MoU with the Rajasthan.

City Finances: Starvation Diet - A recent headline in the local newspapers stated that the Bangalore City Corporation was broke; contractor payments were delayed by several months, and there was little money for infrastructure investment. This is not an unusual situation across urban India.

Airport Privatisation and Local Government - The best services in the interest of the public are often sidelined highlighting the gaps in jurisdictional issues and diffused ownership structures in the air transport sector. Local governments have to ultimately deal with the impact of location-related concerns faced by citizens, however their ownership stake in minimal, leaving little room to address key issues. Ramesh Ramanathan shares ideas on the runway to change.

Google-Earthing our Urban Chaos - It’s the familiar experience of living at a time of urban India’s big city boom – A kaleidoscope of chaos. Clearly, a way to untangle the mess points to policy reform, greater participation, and values born from felt human experiences of engaging at the neighbourhood level. Ramesh Ramanathan offers wide-angle perspectives.

In Defence of Government - Often, our dark views of government functionaries colour our thoughts entirely. However, there are champions in this challenging environment whose interest and striving for change deserves our empathy and appreciation. Ramesh Ramanathan directs his attention thus.

Our Roads – A Metaphor for our Democracy:
The ground reality of our democracy is a story well-captured in the state of our roads, discovers Ramesh Ramanathan. The system’s cracks whether coordination, corruption or citizen participation – all play out in a bumpy ride towards the dream for a vibrant democracy.

Urban Infrastructure Funding: May a Thousand Lilies Bloom - The funding crunch in the urban infrastructure area in cities exhibiting rapid growth has turned the search to alternatives sources of raising finance. LILIES are what Ramesh Ramanthan suggests. This proposed funding tool will bring in citizens as active stakeholders, together with lenders and city government. Returns will be encouraging for the citizen and indeed for their cities.

Deepening Democracy – Global Challenges. Democracy can be the thriving ideal it has the propensity for, if countries take the need to “return power to the people” seriously. India with its feudal history is still grappling with the participatory structures she shares with her citizens. Global challenges in democracy have lessons for India.

The Thumbtack and the Elephant - An antediluvian attitude toward urbanisation can take us away from long-term wins in tackling urban land issues. .

Where the City Ends and the Village Begins - Rapidly urbanising cities are panning out, and gradually absorbing surrounding villages in its wake. In this context jurisdictional boundaries for public service delivery is ill defined, and responsibilities of departments is fuzzy. Hope lies in tracking these issues, and implementing reforms.

Bulldozers and Building Bye Laws
- One of the most contentious issues rocking every city in the country today is building violations.

Garbage Bins and the Kyoto Protocol - How much energy does it take for community initiatives to survive the strength of an apathetic city corporation and the financial pulls that feed vested interests in an area like solid waste management, for example?

New Year's Wish - A Prime Minister's Internship Programme. From the good wishes going round for 2006, this could well be the ‘best wish’ chosen by young students aspiring to understand government and make a difference. Ramesh Ramanthan details the possibility of students working as interns on a government programme. Imagine, he says, a Prime Minister’s Internship Programme (PMIP) announced as a small programme initially– say 20 post-graduate internships – with recruitment at the top institutions in the country, across liberal arts, social sciences and economics.

Dual-Rated Bonds: Markets With a Conscience? The financial health of cities is now being valuated, in the context their increasing responsibility for public services. An abysmal two per cent is spent at the municipal level. This compares poorly with growing cities worldwide. How can more funds be devolved to local governments?

At Long Last – A National Initiative for Urban Reforms. Urbanisation has finally got the attention it deserves through the announcement of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). This ambitious plan for 63 cities has a total budget allocation of 1 lakh crores towards urban development, and is linked to reform. Political will is now clearly in place and holds out hope for the future of urban India.

The Energy for Urban Change – Where will IT come from? Initiatives from cities the world over indicate that better outcomes are a result of greater participation from citizens across all sections. Government seems to resist this energy and erase the opportunities that could present themselves for a better urban scenario. Ramesh Ramanathan illustrates that participatory democracy is the need of the hour. Time has come to release the energies that have been stymied for too long.

Rural-Urban Partnerships – An ERA of Glorious Possibilities. The world today is seeing two clear trends: urbanisation and federalism.Taken together, these two trends have deep implications for politics, policy and public services in our country. Unfortunately, the size and scale of rural problems has locked politicians and policy makers into defining the choice as a zero-sum game – of rural versus urban. While this makes visceral political sense, and even possibly yields short-term benefits, it has no rigorous logic supporting it. The answers to our country’s development problems cannot lie in pitting urban versus rural.

Infrastructure, Politics, Governance: the Maturation of Urban Issues - In his remarkable story about the creation of the United Nations, Stephen Schlesinger uncovers the little-known script that was being played out in the months and days around the end of the Second World War.

Water and Power - Urban Lessons from Delhi. Of the holy triumvirate of public goods cleverly coined by a political party - “bijli, sadak, pani” - two are haunting the Delhi Chief Minister. Over the past month, Mrs Dixit must feel like her dream re-election has turned into a nightmare, with her trusted constituency turning the tables on her. This is a story of different services, differing delivery challenges and unrelated underlying issues, bound together by public angst with a single message: “Do not take us for granted.”

Pro-Poor Programmes: Getting the details Right - Most people who can read and write would likely fall outside the ambit of poverty alleviation programmes of our government; very few of us have actually applied for a subsidised housing programme or guaranteed employment schemes. But we talk about them, aware that there is tremendous inequity in our country, and that somehow there must be a way for the rising tide of prosperity to lift all boats. Half-ridden with guilt and half-riddled with ignorance, we therefore allow our governments to contemplate new programmes, those that promise – yet again – not to leave anyone behind.

Decentralisation Second Wave. Around the time of Independence, Gandhi said, “India lives in her villages”, and asked that they become centres of self-government. Close to sixty years on, the argument is still valid – with one change: India no longer lives only in her villages. Already, we are close to 30% urban, and within the next 20 years, there will be more Indians living in cities and towns than in our villages. Responding to this challenge is all about strengthening local governments, but with some nuances.

Pataudi and Democracy Why do we seem to have the elements of a democracy, without the complete benefits of being one?

The Realm of Rural - Urban Possibilites Safal is an example of how urban infrastructure and connectivity can be used to improve rural livelihoods, and at least partially solve India’s problem of rural unemployment.

Seeds of Change in the Seams of Conflict. The simmering rifts between rural and urban demands are exploding with increasing frequency.

Visible Infrastructure, Invivible Decisions - Bangalore seems to find a way to be in the news, for all the wrong reasons: a recent media cover story talked of creaking infrastructure.

Urban Land Reforms: Finally Coming of Age? Deve Gowda’s rallies about rampant land encroachments dominate the news in Bangalore.

Tobacco Leaves, Naphtalene Balls and Land Records- Over the past few months, land issues are surfacing everywhere: the brouhaha over relocating industries out of Delhi, the re-use of mill land in Mumbai, the land needs of knowledge industries in our newer cities. This spotlight is a blessing.

The End of an ERA – A few weeks ago, what seemed like just another land allotment announcement in Bangalore marked possibly the end of an era: the lily-white image of the IT sector.

Urbanisation: Getting over the Denial Phase - Barring a few brave soldiers, there is a deep-rooted mindset of denial about urbanisation in policy circles in India.

Budget 05 – Nice Painting, Poor Canvas After all the expectation, it is finally over. The Finance Minister and his team deserve praise for presenting a well-thought out budget. However, there is a deeper context to the budget speech, one that the Minister himself does not control.

Lessons in Urbanisation
- India is just coming to terms with its urbanisation. Unfortunately, we are still to come to terms with infrastructure’s social welfare benefit.

A Credible low-Income housing Policy: Within Reach? This is not just about “slum demolition drives”; it requires a coherent low-income housing policy.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone- The definition of a twilight zone is an ambiguous region between two conditions, a surreal space where normal rules don’t apply. Most residents of India’s major cities pass through such twilight zones every day, on their way to and back from work.

It's not the Hardware, It's the Software - If there is one area where the corporate sector has a disproportionate say in government, it is in urban infrastructure. Even discounting its over-emphasis in the media, corporate opinion holds genuine potential to impact policy.

Too many Cooks in the Urban Services Kitchen - Imagine a puppet whose strings are being pulled by different puppeteers: the hands by one, the legs by another, the head and shoulders by a third. Sitting in the audience, the show would not look pretty. City governance in India is similar, being pulled and pushed in different directions - sometimes even torn apart - by a chaotic urban administrative set-up.

The Urban Voter: A Second - Class Citizen - In the past few months, barely a day has gone by without public mention of the need to upgrade urban infrastructure in India.

Disclosure: Beyond Right-to-Information - Imagine if we could assess the performance of local governments every quarter. Imagine if we could compare Bangalore’s education performance with Mumbai’s, Hyderabad’s healthcare delivery with Chennai’s. Imagine if the media could cover city performance the same way that they cover Infosys and Wipro, and the kind of healthy competition this could unleash.

Federalism, Citizenship and Urban Decentralisation in India - As with most hazy notions about India’s glorious past, most Indians assume that we invented the concept of federalism and decentralisation: images of a panchayat negotiating the affairs of the village are part of our collective consciousness.

Local Finances: Looking for Leadership from the 12th Finance Commission - This is a time to respect institutional arrangements, and allow them to play leadership roles in charting the fiscal map for local governments. One such leadership candidate is the 12th Finance Commission.

Local Government: The Invisible Force - In May, we gave ourselves a new Parliament in Delhi, as well as a few new State Assemblies, when citizens cited issues of bijli, sadak and pani to oust incumbent MPs and MLAs. Unfortunately, they should have used their votes more intelligently.

Navigating the Complex Currents of Water Infrastructure
- Greater Bangalore is approximately 500 sq.km., jurisdictionally composed of the central city, surrounded by a constellation of 8 smaller municipalities where much of Bangalore’s residential and IT-led business growth is coming from.

Must-Have Conditions for Urban Tranformation - “We needed a predictable stream of cash flows that we could isolate”, said the banker who participated in a recent municipal infrastructure finance project, “because the government’s financial management systems are broken.”

Assessing Governmnet: Personal Notes - It has been around five years that I have been working with government, at various levels in our federal system, during which many myths have been exploded and many insights gained. What has emerged is a more informed sense of what is needed to improve public governance.