Posted By
S A Aiyar
25 July 2010, 01:15 AM IST
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has long been a hot topic globally. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has lectured companies on it. Some corporations have won acclaim and awards for CSR.
Two of them were BP, the oil giant, and Goldman Sachs, the big...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
18 July 2010, 07:08 AM IST
Sonia Gandhi has approved the National Food Security Act. This aims to deliver 35 kg of grain per month at Rs 3 per kg to every family in the 200 poorest districts, extend this as feasible to other districts, and provide 25 kg per month to families that aren't...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
11 July 2010, 01:04 AM IST
The share price of British Petroleum, the fourth largest company in the world, has halved after causing the greatest environmental disaster in history. Its out-of-control Macondo well is spewing thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico,...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
04 July 2010, 12:24 AM IST
For those who think the Great Recession is over, I have disturbing news. I asked a top Wall Street manager last week what the chances were of a full-blooded European financial crisis. He replied, “100 per cent.” In February, the Greek fiscal crisis...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
27 June 2010, 12:30 AM IST
So you think that Indian tribals are utterly downtrodden, oppressed and bypassed by national economic development? You think activists are right to view Maoist insurgency as a tribal blessing and the only way forward for such an oppressed group?
Think...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
20 June 2010, 01:53 AM IST
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is smiling. He had hoped to get Rs 35,000 crore from auctions of spectrum to telecom companies for 3G and broadband wireless access. In fact, the auctions fetched a whopping Rs 106,000 crore.
Thanks to this bonanza,...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
13 June 2010, 05:32 AM IST
An outpouring of anger and passion has greeted the conviction of seven former Union Carbide officials for negligence in the Bhopal gas disaster. This caused the immediate death of 3,787 people, and the ultimate death of 15,000 to 20,000 people whose lungs were...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
06 June 2010, 12:27 AM IST
Swaminomics declared last week that India must forget the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline because of the outrageously high cost of Iranian gas. Some readers have asked, “Why is Pakistan willing to pay the Iranian price, and go ahead with the project...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
30 May 2010, 01:58 AM IST
External affairs minister S M Krishna visited Tehran in mid-May and said India was still interested in the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, but expressed reservations on security grounds. However, there is now a more important economic reason...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
23 May 2010, 12:46 AM IST
Having killed 76 paramilitary troops in April, Maoists have killed 30 more in a bus explosion in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh. Some cabinet ministers want aerial bombing of Dantewada's jungles to kill Maoists. This will kill civilians and strengthen the...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
16 May 2010, 12:19 AM IST
Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
09 May 2010, 01:31 AM IST
At school, we were taught that Sir CV Raman won the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovering the "Raman effect". But when we asked what exactly the Raman Effect was, our science teacher fobbed us off, saying "it's very complicated."...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
02 May 2010, 03:14 AM IST
Few Indians are interested in Greece’s fiscal crisis, or the proposed IMF loan of €15-25 billion as part of a European rescue package. But Indians should worry. IMF resources raised for low and middle income countries are being diverted to bestow a special...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
25 April 2010, 03:55 AM IST
When India started liberalizing in 1991, many expected it to follow the path of export-oriented low-wage manufacture charted by other Asian countries. This proved impossible since Indian politicians would not liberalize labour laws, which made labour...
Posted By
S A Aiyar
18 April 2010, 01:12 AM IST
I view myself as a freedom fighter, who for 45 years has sought to promote every kind of freedom — economic, political and social. "Escape from the Benevolent Zookeepers", a 2008 collection of Swaminomics columns, emphasized that the socialists who...
Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar is consulting editor of The Economic Times. He has frequently been a consultant to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. A popular columnist and TV commentator, Swami has been called "India's leading economic journalist" by Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution. "Swaminomics" has been appearing as a weekly column in The Times of India since 1990. In 2008, The Times of India brought out the book "The Benevolent Zookeepers - The Best Of Swaminomics".
The views expressed in Swaminomics are the author´s own.
