Showing 1 - 10 of 18
India needs more leaders like Manmohan Singh
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 10/04/2024
» Almost 10 years after he gave way to Narendra Modi as prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh retired last week from public life. During his long career, Mr Singh also served as chief economist, central bank governor, finance minister, and foreign minister. Although he disappointed many who hoped he would accomplish more, India today owes much of its success to the reforms he implemented.
US reign at World Bank must end now
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/02/2019
» In many ways, David Malpass, whom US President Donald Trump nominated to head the World Bank, is an unsurprising choice. He's a senior Treasury official overseeing international affairs. Plus, his background absolutely screams "Trump nominee": He isn't a woman (Indra Nooyi, formerly of PepsiCo Inc, was being considered). He is an outspoken critic of the institution he is now to head (recall Scott Pruitt's tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency). And he has a controversial Wall Street background (he was chief economist at the ill-fated Bear Stearns), as well as some embarrassing calls in his past (he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2007 insisting that the housing market couldn't pull down the broader economy).
Tarnishing a developing-world star
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 04/01/2019
» Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina looks like a developing-world success story. Last year, its economy grew at close to 8% a year, faster than its neighbour India's. Its human development indicators, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen is fond of pointing out, are even better than its income level would indicate.
Belt and Road hits a pothole in Pakistan
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 12/10/2018
» Pakistan's government has finally admitted it needs help. Finance Minister Asad Umar says he will be meeting officials of the International Monetary Fund in Bali this weekend. There he'll try and work out the terms for a bailout that would cover a US$10 billion (328 billion baht) hole in Pakistan's financing needs.
Pakistan's army takes on wrong fight
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/07/2018
» Nawaz Sharif -- dodgy businessman, convicted criminal and thrice prime minister of Pakistan -- showed on Friday, in his triumphant return to Pakistan, that he remains by far the country's most popular politician. Infuriatingly, he also represents Pakistan's best chance at becoming a "normal" country anytime soon. As he fights what looks very much like an attempt by the military to decide the next election, the rest of us should hope he succeeds.
Modi should fear strength of opposition
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 22/05/2018
» As a politician, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is distinguished by his relentlessness. Every vote, every constituency, every election matters. Mr Modi has built his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into an electoral juggernaut that runs 21 of India's 29 states; 70% of India's population is ruled by the BJP at both the state and the federal level.
Poor need homes, not monuments
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/03/2018
» Here in the City of London, you can step out of Bank underground station and walk a few hundred metres in any direction to see what Pritzker Prize-winning architects can do when they push themselves. At Bank intersection itself, breaking up the heavy imperial-era neoclassicism of Soane, Baker and Lutyens is James Stirling's Number One Poultry, whose postmodern curves softly echo the other buildings' grandiose lines. Stirling won the Pritzker, "architecture's Nobel Prize", in 1981; Number One Poultry, still controversial, is nevertheless now the youngest building to be officially protected, or "listed", by the British government.
Indians' skills don't match up -- yet
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/11/2017
» If India is to live up the expectations of its own people and become a successful middle-income country in a few decades, the country has multiple problems to solve -- its sclerotic politics, its clogged infrastructure, its choked judicial system, its lack of investable capital, its interfering and inefficient state. But perhaps the greatest hurdle is its poor stock of human capital. Without better education, health and skills, India won't be able to build a middle class and its efforts to become the next China can't succeed.
New tax system all tangled up
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 28/09/2017
» India's new indirect tax system, which for the first time tries to standardise most taxes across this vast country's many states, is proving to be even more difficult and disruptive to implement than first feared. That speaks to the unnecessary complexity the government's introduced into what should have been the simplest of laws.
Modi's misguided economics will catch up with him
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 02/05/2017
» It's been almost three years since Narendra Modi took over as prime minister of India -- but, in many ways, it feels longer. Mr Modi's domination of Indian politics, and of Indians' imagination, is complete; no alternative seems possible, every challenger has been defeated. But bad economics has a habit of catching up with its practitioners eventually. And for all his political success, Mr Modi's mismanagement of the Indian economy may yet be his downfall.