Page 3 - Opinion
'Being unorthodox on microeconomic policy is better'
RBI has been adopting more liberal attitudes towards bank licensing, towards financial inclusion, & towards payment technologies in order to foster growth
'Make in India is not make for India'
India's approach in aligning business and strategic goals bears some similarity to the experiences of East Asian and South-East Asian polities as they traversed their path of national development. Increasingly, our foreign policy is dominated by the quest for capital, resources, technology, capabilities and best practices. When a prime minister goes to Hannover to showcase Make in India or to San Francisco to unveil Start-Up India, clearly we are entering a different era. It is one where making it easier to do business is a key element of our strategy. Today, every embassy has a designated commercial officer. We are the first port of call not just for Indian business going out, but increasingly for foreign business coming in. There is a division in the external affairs ministry tasked to handhold foreign investors. Creating a better enabling environment for business is our daily mantra. And addressing the political and regulatory impediments is very much at the heart of our diplomatic
Let us increase society's tolerance to the use of money
In a very interesting recent book, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel points to the range of things money can buy in modern society. He seems to want to make us angry at the growing dominance of the market. Professor Sandel worries not just about the corrupting nature of some exchanges as they are monetised but also questions their effectiveness; For instance, do kids really develop a love of reading if they are bribed to read books? He is also concerned about unequal access to money, which makes trades using money inherently unequal. More generally, Sandel fears that the expansion of anonymous monetary exchange breaks down social cohesion, and argues for reducing money's role in society.While Sandel's concerns are not entirely new, his examples are worth reflecting on. For instance, some companies pay the unemployed to stand in line for free public tickets to Congressional hearings in the United States. They then sell the tickets to lobbyists and corporate lawyers, who have a business
The nine pillars of the Budget are cracking, crumbling
Sir, I rise to participate in the discussion of the Finance Bill, 2016. I shall start by quoting para 187 of the Hon Finance Minister's Budget speech on February 29, 2016
