16 April 2012

Monday Reads - The Best of Politics, Economics, & Ideas



I am back with the reading list!

  • How Britain has sold more than half its companies to foreigners. (Daily Mail)
Is this the price that all nations have to pay for an increasingly globalised world? Not at all — in fact, Britain is unique in having such a supine attitude to selling off its crown jewels. Other countries adopt what’s come to be known as ‘economic patriotism,’ which involves putting tremendous obstacles in the path of foreign bids. While India has bought UK enterprises such as Jaguar Rover, it won’t allow British firms to take full control of its own companies.
In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country the size of Arizona and New Mexico.... [In] a typical apartment block known as a “Face Me, Face You”... whole families squeeze into 7-by-11-foot rooms along a narrow corridor. Up to 50 people share a kitchen, toilet and sink — though the pipes in the neighborhood often no longer carry water. 
India is the most elitist, exclusive, unequal and stratified country in the world, and we don’t even know it. The Indian elite – which smugly calls itself the “middle class”, since it alone benchmarks itself globally – has constructed walls of privilege for itself that are all the more powerful for being invisible to many eyes. And if not invisible, then concealed behind other words — “culture” and “merit”, for example. 
Swagato & Ninan of TOI lampoon the farce of issuing apologies in bilateral relationships between the triumvirate of the U.S.-India-Pakistan. 



2 comments:

sumit said...

Hi Sir,

Can you please write on article on your favorite reads,the books you recommend,must read sort of books on multidisciplinary topics.

Regards,
Sumit

veerraju said...

Mihir Sen's article-a thought provoking one!