Mobius Strip
Mobius Strip Half Full or Half Empty -No one knows where in India things are going to explode, and in which corner sublime alchemy is taking place...
The Mind of the Middle Class - If a society has to function, it requires millions of selfless acts. This work is not the responsibility of government...
Well Done, Mr Kelkar -In the ocean of disagreement about India’s economic indicators—gross domestic product growth, inflation, share prices—there is an island of consensus: the direction of interest rates...
An unfair mortgage market -What a sophisticated banking industry cannot manage is now being handed off to the man on the street...
The Republic Of Corruption -We need a combination of credible systems and collective leadership to catalyse a virtuous cycle of change...
Nurturing India's Narrative -India’s post-crisis narrative is getting baked really fast. As the first decade of the 21st century ended, the rounds of panel discussions and prognostications have served to act as the chambers in which this narrative has been kneaded and shaped. This is how it goes....
The Pursuit of Goodness -For most of us, our days are consumed by the immediate: project deadlines, the day’s agenda, children to pick up. What is often missing is an underlying foundation, a deeper rationale that guides our actions....
The Pointillism of Poverty -Shankar, our driver, has been working in the family for at least 15 years. He joined my father’s business as an unskilled labourer in the early 1990s, migrating from a small village in Tamil Nadu....
Afghan Counter - Insurgency -There are many ingredients of success in Afghanistan, but improved local services is a key element...
The impact investing world -One exciting thread is a quest for a new way of thinking about markets and their intersection with social issues...
Reviewing the government - ‘Performance accountability is weak and enforced only once every five years via the ballot box...
My Barber’s Wisdom - ‘There are two kinds of poor people, those who have the capacity to improve their lives, and those who don’t’...
Conflict, Symbols and Politics - We need to acknowledge conflicts as a positive attribute of a complex society, not trivialize them...
Markets and Entrepreneurs - We need to focus on policy prescriptions that make it easier for micro entrepreneurs to succeed...
Harness Urban Opportunity - Every rupee of investment in the urban sector is productive--it boosts economic activity and multiplies...
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.
