The page of Gurcharan Das
A story of private success and public failure: Unless it fixes its institutions, India will not become a developed nation in 25 years
In April 2011, I was invited by the Arab Spring movement to present the India Model for Egypt’s future. They asked me three questions: How did you keep the generals out of power? Two, how did you become one of the fastest growing economies in the world (and a global outsourcer of IT services)? Three, how did you create social harmony in the most diverse place on the earth? They wanted to know how India had managed to have such a moderate Muslim population.
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English-Vinglish, Hindi-Shindi
India doesn’t need a national language. Plus, Hindi is growing & English is no longer elitist.
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Union Budget: Investment over consumption in 2022
This Budget chooses job creation over freebies and this is a victory.
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Toolkit for the Indian reformer: The farm laws fiasco offers 7 lessons on how to reform in a democracy
Prime minister Narendra Modi stunned the nation on November 19 when he revoked three farm laws that had led to sustained protests during the past year. A government at the zenith of power, with a strong majority, had listened to the people. It was a victory for India’s democracy.
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AI: Branding & billion dollars
Tatas will have to infuse substantial equity and run two brands to optimise the Air India acquisition
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No nation became prosperous without trust between government and business.
In the past few weeks, a series of disquieting events have raised the question of trust between government and business. It brought back unhappy memories of the License Raj. Some think that getting government and business to trust each other is hopeless, like getting a pig to sing.
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Covid and the bureaucracy: India needs modern institutions that are autonomous, accountable and creditworthy
The events of the past month have been so tragic, so unspeakably ugly that the only rational response was to pretend it wasn’t happening. The raging second wave of the virus revealed not only the governmental ineptitude but also exposed India’s soft underbelly – our heavy bureaucratic system, which wasn’t nimble enough to cope with the crisis.
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Can Covid shift our politics? It’s a national emergency now. Let it bring to an end our Age of Hatred
The dreaded second wave of the coronavirus has created a national emergency. You’d think it would have united our republic, but India remains hopelessly divided. A straightforward problem of vaccinating our people becomes the subject of political football. While aam admi scrambles helplessly from hospital to hospital in search of oxygen, a bed, a ventilator, our political parties behave like prehistoric tribes, fighting elections as though they are battles for extinction. They don’t even share a common vocabulary to empathise in this Age of Hatred.
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A tale of two heroes: An Ashoka University donor on the challenges of doing good in today’s world
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, professor of political science and a passionate critic of the government, resigned from Ashoka University last week because he felt he’d become a ‘political liability’. The media has portrayed it as a morality tale of good versus evil but, in fact, it’s a tragedy.
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Doing good in India gets harder: Philanthropy should be regulated by an independent regulator, not by the home ministry
Indira Gandhi’s Emergency was a tragedy in modern India’s history. A second tragedy was not to have undone the terrible laws enacted during the Emergency. One of these is the Foreign Contributions (Regulations) Act or FCRA, which was amended last month and has become more draconian.
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