World leaders find new LUV in the Swiss Alps
DAVOS: The helicopters have taken off in swirling snowdrifts, security barricades are down, and the little Alpine villages of Davos and Klosters are recovering from the invasion of The Powers That Be....
View ArticleFor whom the building talls
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! — Percy Bysshe Shelley I’m not usually given to starting these columns with sonnets. But when a long-dead romantic poet...
View ArticleIt happens only in India
Once in a while, something comes along that gives me that warm glow of feeling, ‘hey, I’ve been on the right track’ . Ever since I came to live and work in Europe, I’ve ranted almost incessantly about...
View ArticleGoing to UK, verified by visa
This time of the year is usually dull for people like us. Everybody’s headed into the summer holidays. Luckily, half the British cabinet and its ginormous retinue have just come back from India, in...
View ArticleDon’t let that chip get soggy
I notice that the Americans hiking H1-B visa costs to Indian companies to pay for border security with Mexico is hitting headlines in India. I also notice that the Indian IT industry, led by Nasscom,...
View ArticleNiyamgiri to Delhi, via London
A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into a visiting Indian corporate type. We were naturally chatting about the Vedanta issues. He bet me that its bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri would go through, but...
View ArticleIt’s broken society everywhere!
“ Madam yahan pe subko tension hai. Koi khush nahin hai,” my auto driver tells me voluntarily. A few weeks ago, when an old friend told me that Mumbai is gone down the drain, there’s too much anger and...
View ArticleThe games that we play
The matter of the moment is, of course, the colossal disaster of the Commonwealth Games. I see in the Indian media the army has been called in, at the last minute, for damage control. I also see that...
View ArticleWall Street to the Great Wall
If you are the kind of person who likes playing military strategy games, this might be a good time to make a world map, put nice little red, blue and yellow pins for political, social, economic and...
View ArticleTowering heads meet their match
By the time you read this, Obama’s grand Indian tour will almost be over. Clearly, Diwali or no, Sensex or not, Obama’s visit to India is the flavour of last week. Even in distant London. Someone just...
View ArticleEmerging nations must get ready for leadership
There are floods in Brazil, in Australia, in Sri Lanka. There are food riots in Tunisia, bringing down a20-year government, and the price of onions is fast threatening to overshadow life in India....
View ArticleWas 2010 any better? Any bets?
It’s one of those weeks that gives nightmares to all the various people who depend on markets for their bread, butter and jam. The BSE sensex, which periodically ducks below what they call...
View ArticleLet's create a new global fund
I never, as the modern parlance goes, get it. This whole Twitter-superinjunction row has now been going on and on forever, and I still don't get why anyone should be interested in the extra-marital...
View ArticleSuch institutes need an education
It’s one of those weeks when there’s more than enough stuff going on for a snarky columnist to rip to shreds, and even more to complain about. I could indulge in my favourite pastime of being rude...
View ArticleLeadership is India's biggest worry: Jim O' Neill, Economist, Goldman Sachs
The then Goldman Sachs economist who coined the acronym Bric -Brazil, Russia, India, and China -has blamed India's leadership for failing to implement reforms that would enable the nation of more than...
View ArticleAid and Misplaced Expectations
Every time I think I'm getting used the Brits they go do something that's so typical that I can't resist being snarky. This time, they've whipped up a ridiculous palaver over the Dassault-Eurofighter...
View ArticleWho is the fairest of them all?
The last week has been kind of weird. In India, everyone is over the moon that the government has finally woken up and started working. Everyone I talk to here isn't very impressed. For months now,...
View ArticleWhen Small Can Be Beautiful in Trade
In what now seems like the myths of antiquity, when I first started writing this column, I was writing about Indo-UK trade. It happened to be the biggest topic of discussion on the India circuit.The...
View ArticleTory line on bad foreigner is all about the next election
It’s yet another week in the great political immigration battle that has become routine since the UK Independence Party spooked the major political parties.Now it seems the Equality and Human Rights...
View ArticleBallyhoo at Bali: To what end?
It would be perfectly understandable for Indians to pat themselves on the back after the end of the WTO discussions at Bali. There, see, India stood up for its rights, and the mighty West had to cave...
View ArticleBiz Leaders, Talk Up Brand India
I was morosely scrolling through my inbox deleting all the protests I’m getting from the likes of Amnesty and UN, and I suddenly found one that made me sit up. So here’s the tiny bit of good news:...
View ArticleThere’s a Pretty Property Bubble in the Corner
In the past few quarters, despite rather dismal sales from the retail sector in the all-important Christmas season, the UK’s GDP has been steadily growing. It makes for feel-good reading for...
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