Somebody should answer, but obviously nobody ever does. The Congress party, via the Finance Minister, has been running the RBI for several months now, or so it would appear to most neutral observers. There is nothing a priori wrong with this practice because the RBI is not independent of the politicians. But different political parties have chosen to not exercise their powers, with the present UPA government being the least restrained.
My friends always remind me that I got Bush and US completely wrong. I had long maintained, until the day Bush attacked Iraq, that it made a lot of sense for the US to achieve its goals with Iraq without any military intervention. If the US were not to attack Iraq, there would be a credible threat hanging over Saddam, and it was very probable that the US objectives would have been achieved. Alas, that did not happen. I was quite wrong. Bush went to war and is now unsuccessfully trying to pick himself, and the Republicans, from self-created debris.
It was just two years ago that there was a raging debate about the “low” tax/GDP ratio in India and that we needed to raise tax rates in order to increase the tax/GDP ratio to a respectable level of around 16-18 percent. Economic reforms, by definition, lower tax rates, and this was another argument offered by the sleepwalkers to increase personal income tax rates. Today, just two years later, when the tax/GDP ratio will be close to 20 percent of GDP, the talk of increasing tax rates has gone down (I hope!).
The Sachar Committee report is noteworthy for not recommending quotas as a remedial course of action. Given the pro-quota atmosphere generated by Ms. Sonia Gandhi led UPA, it is surprising that a community, emphatically backward and fulfilling all the constitutional requirements for a quota, should choose this course of action. Large elements of the prejudiced Hindu political leaders, belonging to both the Congress and BJP, claim refuge in the constitution and assert that quotas for Muslims are ruled out because religion cannot be a basis for quotas.
The recent Sachar committee report on the plight of the Muslims (highlighted earlier in these columns) has brought a seemingly legitimate demand from the Muslim community – let us also have reservations, just like the reservations that exist for the SCs/STs and the OBCs. The report has thrown politicians, and knee-jerk politically correct Indians into a quandary. Neither group is famed for its adherence to either logic or justice. Given the overwhelming evidence of backwardness of the Muslims, what is a “liberal” casteist to do?
It seems that the hysteria over the land grab aspects of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) can only be matched by a lack of knowledge among the major participants. The debate has gained urgency, and poignancy, ever since the Congress leader, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, opined on the issue. It is the latest hot topic in the glitterati circuit, even more than the Sensex making new highs. Since the land grab charge is being led not by the usual suspects (the left) but their close allies and my close friends (the left leaning liberals), I will try and document my accusation in some detail.
The dictionary defines “oversight” as “an unintentional omission or mistake”, also “watchful care or management; supervision”. Regardless of which definition one adopts, the oversight committee on the implementation of the new reservation policy in higher educational institutions (hereafter the Moilly report) did not undo any previous “oversights”.
The present UPA government has not set the Ganga on fire with its policies of economic reform. Actually, for that matter, and excluding the gains in foreign policy, this government, at best, has been regressive. A legitimate question arises: what can the government do to extricate itself from its self-imposed immobility, and yet be true to its dharma of the public sector? As it happens, the new pay Commission comes at an opportune time.
The Congress party of India could do a lot worse than the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of Mexico. The history of the PRI is almost identical to that of the Congress. Both were founding parties (the PRI was founded in 1929), and both held near dictatorial powers during their early years in power. And both started declining at about the same time – the Indira Gandhi led Congress in the mid-seventies, and the Lopez Portillo led PRI (1976-82) in the late seventies. Interestingly, the beginning of the end of the PRI was due to corruption charges against Portillo.
The US constitution is 217 years old and has had 27 amendments. India and Malaysia both patterned their constitution on the US; India did it in 1950 and Malaysia in 1957. The number of amendments in Malaysia – 42; the number in India: more than double that of Malaysia, and more than three times the US; 93 amendments, and still counting.
