If Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is &ldquo;losing sleep&rdquo; over &ldquo;the enormity of subsidies&rdquo; he has to provide for in next month&rsquo;s Budget, it should surprise nobody. Government subsidies this fiscal year on food, fuel and fertiliser have already ballooned by Rs 1 lakh crore; they were budgeted at Rs 1.34 lakh crore. Meanwhile, tax receipts are likely to be considerably lower than predicted, given that the economy isn&rsquo;t growing at the rate it should be.

Mihir S Sharma: Handouts for the well-heeled

Business Standard

The tortuous, incestuous and backstabby ethnic politics of the world&rsquo;s second-largest and second-noisiest democracy has recently been convulsed by debate about the term &ldquo;Israel-firsters&rdquo;. It was being used for people accused of continually discovering reasons why US foreign policy should bend to Israel&rsquo;s interests &ndash; and who were being held responsible for the thunderous, warlike drumbeat accompanying increasing tensions with Iran. Everyone then recalled the extremely problematic history of the term, first used in the 1970s by some pretty nasty anti-Semites, and it was quite rightly dropped like a hot potato.

Mihir S Sharma: US and them

You have to have steel in your soul to read the newspapers these days. Everyone is either corrupt or ineffectual, rapacious capitalists cart off our natural resources unimpeded in large trucks marked &ldquo;swag&rdquo;, the world&rsquo;s laughing at the India growth story, and Rahul Dravid has retired. Things have never been this bad, you would think.

Mihir S Sharma: As bad as it gets?

India is the most elitist, exclusive, unequal and stratified country in the world, and we don&rsquo;t even know it. The Indian elite &ndash; which smugly calls itself the &ldquo;middle class&rdquo;, since it alone benchmarks itself globally &ndash; has constructed walls                   of privilege for itself that are all the more powerful for being invisible to many eyes. And if not invisible, then concealed behind other words &mdash; &ldquo;culture&rdquo; and &ldquo;merit&rdquo;, for example.

Mihir S Sharma: Our creamy layer

The odd thing is not that, 10 years after the riots he &ndash; at best &ndash; let happen, Narendra Modi is still around and divisive. The odd thing is that he has become iconic &mdash; in the original meaning of the word. He stands for more than what he actually is. He attracts to himself myths.

Mihir S Sharma: Modi, myths and man

As everyone now knows, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is a little like Bollywood. It lives in the 1970s. The 21st century is something of a mystery to its leaders and its ministers. They don&rsquo;t quite understand the internet. They try to micro-manage their schemes. They&rsquo;re running public-sector enterprises into the ground. They don&rsquo;t allow state governments to take policy initiatives.

Mihir S Sharma: No more 1970s Budgets, please

One thing is clear from watching MPs on the Lok Sabha&rsquo;s biggest day: the only thing that unites them is the words &ldquo;outlay was doubled&rdquo;. It is a fiscal conservative&rsquo;s nightmare: MPs only clap for spending.

Clapping for grants

The awe-inspiring leadership of the People&rsquo;s Republic of China probably doesn&rsquo;t concern itself much about public opinion among those people not fortunate enough to be born Chinese. But they certainly scored a pretty impressive own-goal during the BRICS summit in New Delhi last week, efficiently aided by India&rsquo;s timorous leadership. It isn&rsquo;t just that the Chinese delegation at the Oberoi ate all the mutton chops at the lunch buffet (true) or that they shut off all traffic around Khan market at lunchtime (also true) &mdash; although a power that carelessly antagonises Lutyens&rsquo; Delhi lunchers is unwisely overconfident.

Mihir S Sharma: Our shameful kowtow

Uneven though it is, Christophe Jaffrelot&rsquo;s magnum opus on independent India is the only real challenger to Ramachandra Guha and Bipin Chandra&rsquo;s big books.

Ideas of India

Unless you&rsquo;ve been living under a rock for most of 2011 &ndash; in which case we all envy you &ndash; you will already know that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has found itself unable to govern. It cannot pass legislation through the Rajya Sabha; ministries and departments are openly squabbling, and the prime minister seems unwilling to step in; even reform and clearances that don&rsquo;t require parliamentary approval are being held up. Businesspeople are speaking out, former and serving officers are getting ready to sue the government, and a noisy minority in urban India thinks its living through an Arab Spring of its own.

Mihir S Sharma: How to win allies and influence policy

Is the Indian state too big, or too small? That seems a silly question to be asking, as the Centre struggles with a ballooning fiscal deficit; as a populist consensus takes hold of our politics, and entitlements expand massively; and as the government tightens its vice-like control over public-sector companies.

Mihir S Sharma: The fourth branch

The standoff at the Jaipur Literature Festival mirrors the crisis of Indian writing, says Mihir S Sharma. Both are unworldly and fragile.

Buzzing :

Mihir S Sharma