Vinay Sitapati, who teaches at As
The crisis of 1991 is the most momentous event I was ever involved in; it is also perhaps when I did the greatest service to my country. But it is also when I met colleagues with sharp knives &ndas
For the last one month, India has been wallowing in a cool, scented pool of self-congratulation over the 25th anniversary of economic reform that began in July 1991. But as has been well said, what
Narasimha Rao’s masterstroke was the appointment of Manmohan Singh. One of his closest aides later recalled to me that even as a cabinet minister, Rao always felt that a prime minister should
After teaching English literature in a postgraduate college for nearly a decade, Dr Shiv Kumar Gilra managed to save Rs 4,500 for a scooter. Then, back in the seventies, one had very limited option
The bearded and affable Prabhat Patnaik, a Marxist economist, taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University from 1974 until his retirement in 2010. A Rhodes scholar, he has authored se
You can see them around you all the time. They cut across geography, gender, caste, class, community and religion. Almost all of them have tell-tale signs – they are young, generally between
Yashwant Sinha has a critical role in the story of India’s economic reforms. It was he who was at the helm when the economy was in the worst crisis, keeping the vigil before the dawn of t
If there is one person from the bureaucracy who has made the biggest contribution in planning and implementing the economic reforms, it has to be Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Commerce secretary at t
THE DIAGNOSIS ‘At the edge of precipice’ 2. The new Government, which assumed office barely a month ago, inherited an economy i
It was the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who first wanted to introduce economic reforms. In the pursuit of that, I saw Rajiv as someone who got himself into what I may call a
