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Archive for the ‘Public Policy and Politics’ Category

Pixar Meets Percy Mistry

Posted by: Aadisht on: August 2, 2012

I saw Brave (the Pixar movie about the red haired Scottish princess) last month along with Anand. (We then ended up also putting wine based lunch and gourmet ice-cream so it turned into a man-date, but that’s another story.) So far, it’s been the best movie I’ve seen this year (admittedly, I’ve only seen five), [...]

The Moral Hollowness of Auto Fare Outrage

Posted by: Aadisht on: June 13, 2012

A while ago, this petition just popped up on my Twitter recommendations: an efficient system to complain against errant auto drivers in Bangalore. I was already having a gloomy day, and this has increased my bile even further. So now I will say this in clear, forceful, and largely impolite terms to all the 1,434 [...]

How We Think About Cities

Posted by: Aadisht on: October 20, 2011

Back when twitter was outraging over Dalhi boys and the Madrasan, Shefaly asked me how I, as a Dalhi boy living in Madras, felt about the whole thing. I told her that explaining my feelings would need a blogpost, not tweets, and that I was too busy to write a blogpost, but I’d write one [...]

Frightfully Well Carried Out

Posted by: Aadisht on: July 30, 2011

This morning, I read the Caravan magazine cover story on the organisational restructuring Rahul Gandhi is carrying out at the Youth Congress. It is very good and you should read it too. What I found particularly interesting was this bit: The “transformation effort” kicked off in earnest in May 2008, with a workshop conducted by Jayaram [...]

The DAME Was Late

Posted by: Aadisht on: October 12, 2010

Swami A Aiyar’s latest column is about how the messes in the Commonwealth Games are the ones the government has made, while the few successes involved are the ones the private sector are involved in. This is a sentiment that I generally agree with, but it commits one key error when it talks about how [...]

Massage Parlour Madness

Posted by: Aadisht on: July 1, 2010

In Hyderabad, Commissioner of Police AK Khan has discovered that brothels often advertise themselves as massage parlours because, well, advertising themselves as brothels is illegal. He has swung into action and it is now illegal in Hyderabad for masseurs to massage women, and masseuses to massage men. I really want to know what happens when [...]

Twenty First Century Land Purchases

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 26, 2010

This is pretty interesting. The state of New York is practically broke, but the city of New York is merely deeply indebted. To ease its fiscal crisis, the state of New York is transferring an island from joint administration to the sole administration of New York City: After more than a year of negotiations, New [...]

The SEBI-IRDA Fight

Posted by: Aadisht on: April 26, 2010

As a free market fundamentalist, it is embarrassing for me to admit that a regulator is doing a good job where the market has failed. However I am so pleased about how SEBI has taken on IRDA that I shall suppress my instincts and praise a regulator to the skies. Since this will mean unleashing my inner [...]

Size Does Matter

Posted by: Aadisht on: December 12, 2009

For small or mid-sized companies in India, especially manufacturers, it’s impossible to avoid government interference. Whether it’s the town and country department, or the electricity board, or the state industry ministry, or the central ministry which is in charge, everyone will demand some sort of cut or speed money or the other. It is a [...]

What’s With Salman Khurshid?

Posted by: Aadisht on: October 10, 2009

In the past ten days Salman Khurshid has advocated a return to 1980s Comptroller of Capital Issues style pricing, and also done the headline-hogging complaint about Indian CEOs drawing too much pay. The CEO pay issue is truely bizarre and WTF, for a number of reasons, including: As Deepak Shenoy points out, Khurshid is currently [...]