Questions and answers

Late on Monday afternoon, news came that the people who would lead the revamped Planning Commission, the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog, had been picked. The Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya was to be the vice-chairman of the Aayog. Of the two other full-time members, one other was also an economist: Bibek Debroy. Debroy, who has written a book about Narendra Modi's Gujarat, is also a member of a committee examining Indian Railways. But what struck many about his appointment to the Aayog was that, just that very morning, he had written a typically pointed piece in The Economic Times asking a few questions about the Aayog's scope and purpose. By that evening, it seemed that Debroy himself would be in the best position to answer his questions of the morning.