The demise of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala (RJ), the ‘Big Bull’ of the Bombay and National Stock Exchanges, on August 14 is a big setback for the Indian economy. This statement is likely to invite derision and contempt of eggheads in academia and the overwhelming majority of citizens who believe that India’s century-old stock market is little […]
The small minority of regular readers of this page and publication in general are undoubtedly aware that your editor is more than disenchanted with India’s 256 Central and equal number of state government promoted public sector enterprises (PSEs).
With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that ignorance of ancient India’s glorious tradition of free enterprise which […]
Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of the Silicon Valley of India i.e, Bengaluru’s real estate boom are the neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood and corners-cutting lawyers, who have accumulated massive fortunes from the maze of documents required to purchase and register property.
On July 20, ten teams of the Karnataka Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) made surprise swoops on the offices […]
“Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind,” wrote 16th-17th century English poet John Donne. The demise in Chennai on June 26 of V. Krishnamurthy (1925-2022) has certainly diminished the nation. It marks the end of the most distinguished leader of several show-piece Central government public sector enterprises (PSEs) promoted with great […]
Although the mighty British Empire on which the sun never set has been reduced to the status of a lonely nation exiled to the periphery of Europe following Brexit in 2020, there is something admirable about the tenacity with which Brits are hanging in there by drawing on their indisputably momentous history and soft power. […]
The seemingly placid implementation pace of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which has provoked EW’s July cover story, is deceptive, according to a deep-dive investigation conducted by the Delhi-based daily Indian Express (June 21).
Twenty-four obscure academics with strong links with the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party […]
Readers acquainted with the voluminous features written by your editor in disparate publications including Business India, Businessworld and EducationWorld (estb.1999) are certain to be well-aware that I’m not an admirer of the country’s 256 Central government public sector enterprises (PSEs). And an equivalent number of PSEs promoted by state governments across the country. Continuous investment […]
The once clean, green and well-governed state of Karnataka is fast-transforming into a Broken Windows society. Researched and developed by American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, Broken Windows theory posits that if civic neglect and petty crimes are unpunished, there will be an outbreak of serious crimes and criminality in society.
The Indian badminton squad’s maiden victory in the Thomas Cup final staged in Bangkok last month marked a landmark in the history of Indian sport. In the final, the Indian men’s squad led by Kidambi Srikanth recorded a 3-0 triumph over Indonesia, whose players have won the international Thomas Cup tourney introduced in 1949, a […]
With the sale of the public sector Bharat Petroleum Corp postponed indefinitely and the Centre having slashed its disinvestment receipts target from Rs.1.75 lakh crore in 2021-22 to Rs.65,000 crore this year, socialist India’s public sector enterprises (PSEs) look set to remain a perpetual ball and chain hobbling the Indian economy.
Over the past 75 years since independence, an amoral lumpen bourgeoisie with rural/small-town origins has risen to the very top of the establishment and entrenched itself in the national and state administrative capitals.
How else can one explain the conduct of Karnataka’s rural development & panchayat raj minister K.S. Eshwarappa and his heartless reaction to death […]
Like the French Bourbon dynasty (1589-1793) which forgot nothing and learned nothing, at its 23rd party congress convened in Kannur (Kerala) on April 6-10, leaders and delegates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) indulged in familiar anti-business and privatisation rhetoric reminiscent of the 1960-70s when the comrades were a force to reckon with in […]
The Bridgerton dream of upper-middle class and elite Indians enamoured with this OTT serial broadcast on the streaming platform Netflix, is over. The Peter principle has caught up with Rishi Sunak, the Winchester and Oxford educated son of Indian emigres from East Africa and husband of India-born heiress Akshata Murthy, daughter of Infosys Technologies Ltd […]
Unsurprisingly, the maiden public issue of the public sector Life Insurance Corporation of India (estb.1956), which is likely to be launched within the next few months, is generating heated excitement in the stock market and within India’s fast expanding investors’ community. The cash-strapped Union government, the sole owner of the corporation, is set to offer […]
Commendable facts checking by several online news portals, including Quint have refuted social media reports that the BJP won 165 of its 255 seats in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh legislative election by less than 2,000 votes, and that the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) — a political party promoted by the Hyderabad-based Asaduddin Owaisi […]
Several huge ads featured on March 8 in almost all dailies including the pink papers in remembrance of the late Aditya Vikram Birla (1943-95), proclaimed the judges, juries and awardees of the 22nd Aditya Birla Scholarship Programme.
In the early years of the new millennium, this struggling publication was on the favoured list of Industry House, […]
One major argument advanced in favour of the country’s political class which has divided society on religious and caste lines to win political advantage, and has wrecked the Indian economy with its inorganic socialism experiments, is that they have the pulse of the people. If so, how will apologists for duly elected people’s representatives, explain […]
There’s an inherent paradox in best-selling author and newspaper columnist Chetan Bhagat. Although he writes thought-provoking and readable 1,000 word newspaper columns, he also writes puerile and lazy 60,000-80,000 word English language novels which no intelligent or discerning reader can stomach. If his novels are best-sellers as his publishers proclaim, it’s an indictment of the […]
As the renowned English poet John Donne (1572-1631) observed, every man’s death diminishes us. More so if the man is a great leader who has contributed to the public good and welfare of the general populace. Rahul Bajaj who passed away on January 13 at his home in Pune, was undoubtedly a great industrialist and […]
A January 17 decision of the Telangana government to decree Inglish the medium of instruction in its 30,000 primary-secondary government schools statewide, should be welcomed by all committed to the unity amid diversity aspiration of post-independence India. Earlier in 2019, the YSR Congress government of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh had also decreed Inglish as the medium […]
A January 23 news item to the effect that a Gujarati-Indian family of four including two children, froze to death in sub-zero temperatures on the Canada-US border while attempting to illegally migrate to the US, has been reported in a surprisingly matter-of-fact manner in Indian media. As an inevitable accident.
The ravages of several waves of the Covid-19 pandemic notwithstanding, the Mumbai-based TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) Ltd, seems to be going great guns. The management of India’s most valuable company by market capitalisation (Rs.13.9 lakh crore) recently announced a massive Rs.18,000 crore equity shares buy-back programme. Moreover, it’s all set to become the title sponsor […]
Cracks are beginning to show on the impressive facade of the Bangalore-based Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd, better known as the proprietor company of Byju’s, the heavily advertised online tutorials app which can be accessed through all Internet connected digital devices, including India’s 870 million cell phones.
The rapid transformation of Byju’s into one of India’s […]
The World Inequality Report 2022 of the Paris-based World Inequality Lab, of which bestseller French economist Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century) is a prime mover, highlights that India’s richest 1 percent elite own 22 percent of national income/ wealth, and the richest 10 percent owns 57 percent.
Latest proof that the country’s parasitical public sector enterprises (PSEs) are dragging the economy down is provided by a recent report of the comptroller and attorney general of India (CAG ) on Indian Railways which boasts the world’s largest number of employees (1.6 million). According to the CAG report published last month, to conceal its […]
An unprecedented official letter written by D. Kempanna, president of the Karnataka State Contractors Association (KSCA) to the PMO (prime minister’s office), Delhi, complaining that civil engineering proprietaries and firms in Karnataka that execute civic projects for the state and municipal governments are being forced to pay bribes of 30-40 percent of their project fees, […]
The leisurely pace at which slothful bureaucratic public sector enterprises (PSEs) are being privatised is costing the public heavily in terms of loss production and high prices. A case in point is the public sector Oil & Natural Gas Co Ltd (ONGC) which has totally belied its early promise.
The centenary birth anniversary of Dr. Verghese Kurien, the brilliant visionary who engineered India’s White Revolution (1960-80s) that transformed chronically milk deficient India into the world’s largest producer thereof, was grudgingly celebrated by way of a few paid ads in the Times of India.
Given the posthumous encomiums showered upon him these days, it’s difficult to […]
There’s something disquieting about the increasing number of US-based NRI academics, taking leave of absence from tenured professorships in American universities to play advisory roles in the Central government, enjoy public adulation and exaggerated respect for a few years in India before they scarper back to tolerance and condescension abroad.
For sheer hypocrisy and two-facedness, the English are hard to beat. And to all intents and purposes, compradors vending their goods in this country seem to have learned their lessons well.
Take for example, the latest ad campaign for Dove soap manufactured and marketed by Hindustan Unilever, the India subsidiary of the London/Amsterdam FMCG (fast moving […]
There’s considerable merit in the simile that official corruption is like an ice-berg. Only one-tenth of it above the surface of water is visible to the naked eye. The massive dangerous body of corruption is invisible underwater. In the circumstances, one wonders about the sheer scale of official corruption in Maharashtra, India’s second most populous […]
Even as India’s frontline businessmen and new genre entrepreneurs are working overtime to revive the economy after the Covid-19 disruption, the country’s Left politicians and fellow travellers in the academy continue to vent their ire — especially on social media — against business leaders taking big risks to kick-start the sputtering economy and make good […]
There’s a world of difference between the billionaires of the world’s largest democracies. In the US, entrepreneurs who rise above the herd are empathetic towards their less capable brethren left behind. This empathy prompts magnanimity. They make large contributions to charities, trusts and their alma maters. On the other hand, India’s new rich rarely sympathise […]
News reports that India’s property market has revived to pre-pandemic levels haven’t been given sufficient publicity. According to Knight Frank, an internationally respected real estate consultancy firm, in the July-September quarter, 12.5 million sq. ft of office space and 64,000 homes were sold. Although ex facie, these numbers are impressive, the residential units sold in […]
Common-sense dictates that when MNCs (multinational corporations) contract offshore deals, the capital gain if any, accrues beyond Indian jurisdiction. Yet circa 2010, by convoluted reasoning for which India’s income tax department is infamous, it calculated pro rata capital gains for 17 MNCs including Vodafone, Netherlands and Cairn Energy (UK), levying capital gains tax on their […]
The Indian cricket team’s comprehensive mid-August victory over England in the second Test played at Lords, London, the sport’s most hallowed ground worldwide, marks an inflection point in the history of Indian cricket. For the first time ever, all 20 wickets in England’s two innings were taken by Indian pace bowlers hitherto routinely dismissed as […]
In almost all human capital development indices including the Education Development Index of NIEPA University, Delhi and UNDP’s Human Development Index, the picturesque southern state of Kerala (pop.35 million) is invariably accorded high praise. This is because during the past seven decades since independence, the state has attained 99 percent literacy. The high status […]
ON THE SUBJECT OF HARD-KNUCKLED industry tycoons who brazenly decline to discharge their IOUs, Ratan Tata (RT), currently chairman emeritus of the Tata Group, takes the prize. Several decades ago when the chairmanship of Tata Sons — holding company of the Tata Group — was up for grabs on the passing of the highly-respected J.R.D. […]
THE RETIREMENT WITH EFFECT FROM MAY 1 of Rahul Bajaj (RB) from his exalted position as chairman and chief executive of Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL), marks the end of an era of combative, bare-knuckled, me-first capitalism in Indian industry. As founding editor of Business India and later Businessworld, your correspondent was well-acquainted with RB and […]
THE RETIREMENT WITH EFFECT FROM MAY 1 of Rahul Bajaj (RB) from his exalted position as chairman and chief executive of Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL), marks the end of an era of combative, bare-knuckled, me-first capitalism in Indian industry. As founding editor of Business India and later Businessworld, your correspondent was well-acquainted with RB and […]
- Reshma Ravishanker In a second such incident in less than a month, students in Bengaluru were caught carrying e-cigarettes to school. This was confiscated .....Read More
Vidyashilp University recently hosted its premier event, India Rising: Aspiring Undergrads Summit 2024 at P. Dayananda Pai Auditorium in Yelahanka, Bengaluru. The event united leading .....Read More
