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The Times of India Articles
An
Indo-Chinese curry December 31, 2006
My son lives in Shanghai and I recently spent
two weeks with him. It gave me a chance to meet
and talk to ordinary Chinese people. I was fortunate
to also meet a communist leader and a businessman
who had recently returned after many years in
India. What came through in my conversations
was their passionate desire for business success.
They feel that even the poor are gaining from
their commercial triumphs in the global economy.
They are proud that China will soon become a
great, middle class nation. read
full article
Private virtue, public vice December
17, 2006
In 1989, a much admired and powerful lady
who was raising funds for her NGO, asked me
what I did for a living. I told her that I worked
for a company. “Oh, but what do you really
do—I mean for society?” she said.
I became defensive and began to recount our
philanthropic activities in the districts where
our factories were located. ‘Is that all!’
thundered the eminence grise. I was hurt by
her dismissive attitude, and recently remembered
this incident when Sonia Gandhi reminded fawning
businessmen in the same imperious tone about
their corporate social responsibility (CSR).
CSR has become a buzz word these days, and one
newspaper even has a CSR reporter. But why is
it that something so worthy and high-minded
leaves me uneasy? I think it is because companies
have no business engaging in philanthropy and
businessmen should value more what they do.
read
full article
Thali to plough December
3, 2006
Last week’s Mittal-Walmart deal is symbolic
of an India which is changing quietly. Indians
now consume less cereals and more milk, vegetables
and fruit. In the past 20 years, per capita
consumption of vegetables has trebled in villages
and doubled in towns; milk and milk products
have doubled in urban and rural areas. The share
of high value foods has risen in India’s
agricultural output from 32 to 44 percent from
1983 to 2003. Cereal consumption has declined
even among those below the poverty line, according
to the economist, Ashok Gulati’s analysis.
read
full article
The price of potatoes,
November 19, 2006
I sometimes wonder why I pay Rs 10 per kilo
for potatoes when the farmer receives only Rs
3. My potatoes travel some distance, I realise,
from the farm to the mandi to my bania, and
each person in the chain must get his cut. Still,
the gap of Rs 7 seems excessive, especially
when the American farmer receives Rs 4 to 5.
This gap varies, of course, depending on the
commodity and the season, but studies by agricultural
economists show that farmers in the developed
countries do get a bigger share of the consumer
price because their distribution chain is shorter.
read full article
Things
that matter November 5,
2006
Lant Pritchett wakes up each morning and worries
about the state of India’s government
schools. Formerly an economist at Harvard and
now with the World Bank, Pritchett is happy
that 93 % of India’s children are now
in school as the SRI survey shows. However,
digging deeper into the SRI data, Pritchett
finds that 53 % of all children in urban India
are in private schools. In some states the ratio
is much higher, but urban India overall has
amongst the highest levels of private primary
education in the world. read
full article
Saaf
Aangan Dreams
October 22, 2006
In the late
seventies I lived with my family in Mexico City,
where I noticed that our neighbours would wash
the foot path outside their house every day.
But we, being good Indians, swept our home,
washed our driveway but left the pavement to
the municipality. As a result, the walkway
outside our neighbours’ homes sparkled proudly
while ours remained dirty and sad. It didn’t
take long before we felt ashamed and followed
the good ways of our neighbours.
read full article
India’s
mystifying rise,
October 8, 2006
There
were many smiling Indian faces last week. Our
economy again beat forecasts and grew 8.9% in
the April-June quarter. India’s economic rise
bewilders Indians. No one quite understands
why this noisy and chaotic democracy of a billion
people has become one of the world’s fastest
growing economies. This is the fourth year we
are looking at around 8% growth, and this follows
22 years of very respectable 6% annual growth.
With 25 years of high growth per capita income gains have been huge: from $1,178
in 1980 to $3,051 in 2005 (in ppp). read
full article
Lalu
Prasad is like Reagan (24
September 2006)
Train journeys have increasingly become
a part of my life. My ancient mother had been
ailing in an ashram on the banks of the Beas
River in Punjab, and I would try to visit her
as often as I could. But she was 91 and age
finally caught up with her. She passed away
one night after living a life that I expect
was better than that of most of my countrymen.
read full article
Don’t
despair over integrity (September
10, 2006)
One ought
to read a great book twice, at least. When I
first read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace
I was too young. I was only interested in the
plot and the relationships between Natasha,
Andrei, and Pierre. When I read it again in
my forties, I was deeply moved by its moral
concerns. I realised that the novel is really
about the way we deceive ourselves, how we are
false to others, how we oppress fellow human
beings, and how we’re deeply unjust in our day
to day lives. Most of this moral blindness seems
man-made and avoidable. It makes one wonder
if this is an intractable human condition, or
can we change it? read
full article
Arise from the Clay Earth: Let our cities reflect
the new age. Let there be a Taj for today(August
15, 2006)
When I heard two weeks ago that one Sanjay
Singal, chairman of Bhushan Power and Steel,
had bought a one acre plot on 4 Amrita Shergill
Marg in New Delhi for Rs 137 crores, I wanted
to rush up to him and say to him, ‘Now
that you have one of India’s most prized
properties, do select a great architect to build
your home. For god’s sake, let’s
not have another cut-and-paste job. read
full article
What about
my mother tongue?
(August 27, 2006)
My column on ‘Inglish’ last
month brought a lot of mail. Much of it wasfavourable,
but a few criticised me for advocating the “bizarre”
ideathat we should think of English as an Indian
language and exploit itunabashedly to “conquer
the world”. Since my critics are seriousacademics
I don’t want to dismiss their concerns
lightly.read full
article
How
to score a self-goal (13th
August, 2006)
Truly, we are a wondrous land! In a country
where two thirds of the children are undernourished,
where 70 percent of the people cannot access
safe sanitation and 65 infants die out of a
thousand born, we are seriously debating the
pesticide levels in a product that is probably
the safest in the world from a pesticide perspective.
read full article
The difficulty of being good July 30, 2006
There is a green
playing field near my house where children can
usually be found playing cricket. Over the past
two months, however, they have quietly switched
to football.read full
article
My
next Men and Ideas column July
02, 2006
A few years ago TV viewers in Tamil Nadu were
entertained by pictures of irate children and
grandchildren of Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi
read full article
My next Men and Ideas column
July 02, 2006
Two weeks ago I was invited to a glamorous event
in Manhattan celebrating the launch of a special
issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine
titled The Rise of India to which
I had also contributed
read full article
A
highway called India
June 18, 2006
Homi Bhabha, the distinguished professor of
English at Harvard, recently described India
as a multi-lane highway. This is a happy metaphor,
I think, because it captures nicely our diverse
multilingual, multicultural
read full article
A
question of merit
June 3, 2006
In the recent debate on reservations we have
heard much talk about merit. Ever since the
decision by the cabinet to extend reservations
to the OBC , I have been deluged by anguished
email whose common refrain goes like
read full article
A
hot summer of envy
June 21, 2006
Ever since the state election results, there
has been more than the usual talk about “soaking
the greedy middle class” by the emboldened Left.
As it is, this government has been obsessed
with redistributing poverty
read full article
A
cruel joke
May 07, 2006
When the cabinet meets to
consider the proposal to raise caste reservations
in institutions of higher learning from 22.5%
to 49.5% it should imagine that it is the admissions
read full article
Scholarships,
not quotas
May 07, 2006
When the cabinet meets to
consider the proposal for raising caste reservations
in institutions of higher learning from 22.5%
to 49.5% it should imagine
read full article
High
modernism, captured
Aprl 23, 2006
We are so jaded with the India
versus Bharat story that nothing surprises us
anymore. Yet even a surfeited soul like me blinks
with amazement at this incongruity
read full article
A
metaphor of India
Aprl 09, 2006
Raghav FM Mansoorpur l is
a radio station which used to beam Bhojpuri
and filmi songs, give community news and advice
on all sorts of things, including AIDs and polio.
Raghav Mahto
read full article
Qualities of the heart March
26, 2006
Last year I was on the jury
of the McKinsey Award for the best article in
the Harvard Business Review, a monthly journal
for managers
read full article
In
praise of the right brain March
26, 2006
Last year I was on the jury
of the McKinsey Award for the best article in
the Harvard Business Review
read full article
Deeper
into India’s soul March
12, 2006
How
is it that so many Indians are making it in
the global economy?’ This was a common
refrain during President Bush’s recent
visit
read full article
A
great nation Feb
26, 2006
For
a country that was widely regarded as 20th century’s
great disappointment, it must feel good that
the 21st has begun rather nicely.
read full article
Nasadiya
Temper Feb
12, 2006
The
recent controversy over Islamic cartoons in
Europe is once again testing the boundaries
of religious tolerance. Most Hindus, of course,
believe....
read full article
Why
Rani can’t read? Jan
26, 2006
We
are not a cooperative people, and some even
accuse us of having a crab’s mentality—that
we’d rather bring down the next guy than
see the team win.
read full article
A
post-secular world Jan
15, 2006
Last
month I visited the ‘post-secular world’.
I found myself sitting next to a group of white
Americans on a train from Washington to New
York, who told me blandly that I would go to
hell because I believed in abortion and evolution.
read full article
A
guide to clear thinking Jan
01, 2006
We
live in unusual times. Who would have imagined
in 1991, when communism died and our reforms
began, that fourteen years later the Indian
republic would become hostage to the extraordinary
influence of the Left?
read full article
The
discrete charm of the Metro Dec
18, 2005
Sheila
Dixit may be one of our best chief ministers,
but Elattuvalapil Sreedharan will do more to
knit the vast and disparate people of Delhi
into one wholesome community.
read full article
A
new social contract Nov
20, 2005
I
was deeply embarrassed last week before a distinguished
audience of sophisticated investors abroad—they
virtually called me a liar. A year ago I had
reassured them that our stellar reformers–Manmohan
Singh, Chidambaram and Montek–would not
only ensure that our economic reforms would
continue but they might even accelerate. A year
later, the reforms are stuck and they were angry.
read full article
Everyone
needs an address Nov 6, 2005
When I was growing up in post-Independence India
in the 1950s and 1960s, the word ‘conservative’
was an abuse in the vocabulary of Indian intellectuals.
We passionately wanted change and likened Nehru’s
‘Tryst with destiny’ speech to Wordsworth’s
famous lines on the French Revolution: “Bliss
was it in that dawn to be alive”. To be
conservative in Nehru’s India was to be
on the side of age against youth, the past against
the future, authority against innovation, and
spontaneity against life.
read full
article
Political
dynasties Oct 23, 2005
Nothing quite captures the imagination as these
two facts: whereas three out of four members
of China’s politburo are technocrats,
one out of four members of India’s parliament
has a criminal record. This might explain many
things--the absence of reasoned debate in our
parliament, the depressing state of our governance,
and our creaking infrastructure. But it is ironic
that as our economy becomes stronger, our polity
becomes weaker. Just when our companies are
breaking out of the shackles of family control,
our politics is going the other way
read full
article
Magazine Articles
The
India Model
Although the wold has just discoverd it, India's
economic success is far from new
read
full article
The
Rise of India, Foreign Affairs
July-Aug 2006
What is most remarkable is that rather than
rising with the help of the state, India is
rising despite the state.
read
full article
A
LEARNING CURVE March, 2006
What’s behind India’s success in
the global knowledge economy? One key is the
boom in private schools for all.
read
full article
India shining (1984 – 2004), RIP?
July 12, 2004
It is no use pretending.
While the last general election brought some
good news--especially, a well deserved slap
to Narendra Modi’s fascist face—it also brought
bad news. The hugely positive global sentiment
in favour of India that had prevailed until
mid May has received a setback. read
full article
Private secularism!
April 12, 2004
“The country with the most impressive and intelligent
secularist movement is India,” wrote Christopher
Hitchens in the respected journal, Daedalus,
last summer. Hitchens is a public intellectual
who is read and listened to with some admiration
on both sides of the Atlantic. read
full article
More published writing by Gurcharan Das
Email: gurcharandas@vsnl.com,
gurcharandas@yahoo.com
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