Is this a time for monetary policy easing?

`Headline inflation':The year-on-year change in CPI-IW,with target zone superposed.The best price index in India is the CPI-IW. `Headline inflation' in India corresponds to the widely watched year-on-year change in the CPI-IW. The above graph shows us the experience of inflation in India from 1999 onwards. The informal target of policy makers is for inflation to lie between four and five per cent. These are the two blue lines on the graph.In February...

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Measuring social conservatism and social change

The widely reported UNICEF Report Card on Adolescents has survey evidence about persons in the age group 15-19 in India, for 2011. Adolescent boys were asked whether they think that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances, i.e., if his wife burns the food, argues with him, goes out without telling him, neglects the children or refuses sexual relations. The answer: 57% thought it was okay. There were only 8 countries in the sample worse than India: Sierra Leone (57%), Swaziland, Azerbaijan,...

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Land of the Seven Rivers, by Sanjeev Sanyal

Land of the Seven Rivers, by Sanjeev Sanyal, is a delightful book. I feel that everyone who is interested in India should read it.You may like to see my India bookshe...

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The rise of high-end finance work in India

by Shashank Bansal.Until recently, outsourcing by global financial firms to India conjured up an image of commoditised low end services outsourcing: call centres, peripheral systems programming, and testing and maintenance. However, in recent years, there is a new rise of more sophisticated work. This reflects supply and demand factors. Global financial firms are keen to cut costs. Capabilities of operations in India -- both captives and independant firms -- have grown for many reasons: The individuals involved in this field in India have gained...

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Activism and wonkery are the yin and yang

The first element of achieving change is a dissatisfied public thatis able to speak up. In places like China, freedom of speech iscircumscribed and it is not that easy to express dissatisfaction withthe way things are going. In India also, a href="http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.in/2010/04/freedom-of-speech-in-india.html">freedomof speech is under attack, and particularly when it comes to oura href="http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.in/2012/09/indian-capitalism-is-not-doomed.html">problemsof crony capitalism, the threats that we face are dire. But...

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Interesting readings

An improved version of my blog post Law and order: How to go from outrage to action has appeared in the latest Pragati: From outrage to action.From the Delhi police: Why women deserve to be raped by Lakshmi Chaudhry, on Firstpost.In continuation of Faulty tradeoffs in security on this blog, see Bruce Schneier's review of Against security by Harvey Molotch.Congress governing somewhat better without Pranab Mukherjee by Javed Sayed in the Economic Times.Ila Patnaik on the deeper significance of FDI in non-tradeable areas...

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