Multilateral agencies and economists with much influence have been urging laissez-faire in agriculture. While success with the rich countries has been minimal despite the commitments under the WTO, many poor countries with much agricultural potential in the long run have been coaxed to adopt...

More than political constraints, an adherence to orthodoxy on the part of policy makers may have been responsible for the economy operating at well below the growth rate that it is capable of achieving. Part of the problem is orthodoxy’s (limited) understanding of the East Asian trade...

This note argues that the GEB needs to be restructured urgently. The principal challenge is really to overcome that major ‘agency problem’ that results in leakage of enormous revenue. Plugging the leakages alone would make the GEB profitable at current average tariffs! The key elements of...

These comments on the Draft Bill 2001, had been widely circulated in September 2001. Discussions on the Bill have again revived in the media and elsewhere, as the reform of the power sector has made little headway, and there is much concern that something needs to be done. Little progress or...

Both India and China began to reform in the early eighties, with the Indian reforms being very slow until 1991-92 after which they "take-off". While there are many differences the crucial difference is that China adopted the same export led growth (ELG) policies of the successful East Asian...

Briefly the proposal is for market competition in generation, through the development of a hybrid wholesale and retail (for bulk consumers alone) market. It is not a marker for all the electricity in the system, but largely a market that would allow distribution-cum-generation companies to...

The issue of reservation has been presented as arising out of educational and social backwardness of the OBCs. Except in nomenclature there is no substantial evidence to show that most or even the majority of the ‘jatis’ that constitute the OBCs are educationally backward. The heterogeneity...

During the eighties there have been stop-start attempts at liberalization and at policy change to give new direction to the economy which had been drifting ever since serious planning had been given up in the mid-sixties with the onset of the recession then. The period since then right up to...

In this paper we discuss the stylised problems relating to water and irrigation in India and argue that most of the inefficiencies, misuse and environmental damage have their roots in the mispricing of water and electricity. Since the only kind of subsidies thus far used are price based input...