TN Ninan is among the pioneers of business journalism in India. He is also ethical, in a country where too many journalists have become rich while doing a second job as fixers and pimps for businessmen and politicians. Almost four decades of unbiased journalism, at the highest level, gave Mr Ninan unparalleled access to policy-makers, businessmen, politicians and thinkers. When he writes a book, you would expect that he would enlighten and entertain us with unknown anecdotes, events and aspects of famous personalities, with stories behind the stories. But, in his first book, The Turn of the Tortoise, Mr Ninan has chosen to take an economist’s serious tack with a suitable sub-title: ‘The challenge and promise of India’s future’.
Clearly, what we, the privileged urban, upper middle-class people, view as a relatively continuous improvement in living standards has been caused by nothing other than two major windfalls of 20 years ago and a lucky break this year. Indian netas and babus have had little positive contribution to make. Indeed, anecdotal evidence of their wealth makes us realise how India has frittered away the windfall gains it was fortunate to get, through a fatter and more wasteful government. When a junior engineer of a small municipality is caught with Rs20 crore in his house collected from builders, when any small-time MLA can boast of a few hundred crore rupees of wealth, when the biggest of leaders in prosperous states can control thousands of crores in land, buildings, businesses and money stashed abroad, we have not moved an inch towards a State which runs on merit and rule of law, even as we lift the poor from below the poverty level at a tortoise’s pace.
Inside story of the National Stock Exchange’s amazing success, leading to hubris, regulatory capture and algo scam
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One pure Hindutva is implemented all these problems will be automatically solved.
Hah. Hah.