Artificial intelligence yet to make an economic impact

It's common to hear about how AI is going to transform the world and lead us to undreamt of riches. Economists are sceptical. A common view in the US is that AI will, at most, help sustain productivity growth at 2 per cent, it's not going to cause any acceleration. But that doesn't stop the industry types from gushing about AI.

What we can confidently say now is that AI has so far not had any significant impact. And that seems to be because the adoption of AI by industry is quite weak. Meaning to say, businesses have not incorporated AI into their practices in ways that can transform the businesses, as an article in the Economist points out.

I will content myself with reproducing a few points: 

Official statistics agencies pose AI-related questions to firms of all varieties, and in a wider range of industries than Microsoft and LinkedIn do. America’s Census Bureau produces the best estimates. It finds only 5% of businesses have used ai in the past fortnight..... Even in San Francisco many techies admit, when pressed, that they do not fork out $20 a month for the best version of Chatgpt.

Concerns about data security, biased algorithms and hallucinations are slowing the roll-out. McDonald’s, a fast-food chain, recently canned a trial that used ai to take customers’ drive-through orders after the system started making errors, such as adding $222-worth of chicken nuggets to one diner’s bill. A consultant says that some of his clients are struck by “pilotitis”, an affliction whereby too many small ai projects make it hard to identify where to invest. Other firms are holding off on big projects because ai is developing so fast, meaning it is easy to splash out on tech that will soon be out of date.

We hear often about AI displacing a range of jobs. This hasn't happened either:

Using American data on employment by occupation, we focus on white-collar workers, who range from back-office support to copywriters. Such roles are thought to be vulnerable to ai, which is becoming better at tasks that involve logical reasoning and creativity. Despite this, the share of employment in white-collar professions is a percentage point higher than before the pandemic..

Will things change with more AI adoption? Will AI adoption happen on the scale projected? We don't know. 

India's banking sector going from strength to strength

Going through the RBI's latest Financial Stability Report (June 2024), one has to pinch oneself in disbelief. The turnaround in India's banking sector has surpassed all expectations. One key indicator: the ratio of gross NPAs to advances is 2.8 per cent, below the international benchmark of 3 per cent.

Even more surprising is the improvement in profitability, measured by return on assets, in 2023-24. Analysts had warned us that, with deposit costs rising, banks' margins would be squeezed. A greater focus on retail loans would result in higher bad loans and result in high provisions. Both these would dent banks'  returns in 2023-24. They have been proved wrong.

In my latest article in BS, I explain how this has happened:

 

FINGER ON THE PULSE

Banking sector continues to confound sceptics

It has shown remarkable resilience in the post-pandemic years despite challenges and warnings about instability

T T Ram Mohan

India’s banking sector continues to astonish. Its performance in 2023-24, revealed in the Financial Stability Report (FSR) of June 2024, is as much of a pleasant surprise as its turnaround in the preceding years.

The sector entered the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020-21, with a non-performing asset (NPA) level of 8.5 per cent of advances. Analysts warned that the improvement seen in the previous two years was in jeopardy. The chances were that NPAs would shoot up instead of declining. Vast amounts would again be needed to recapitalise public sector banks (PSBs). 

Later, as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced various restructuring schemes, we were warned of the perils of “kicking the can down the road”. If you don’t recognise NPAs now, be prepared for higher NPAs to show up later, analysts said. It was better, they argued, to “bite the bullet” now. 

They were proved wrong.  Out-of-the-box thinking enabled the RBI to nudge the banking sector back to normalcy in the post-pandemic years despite the Ukraine shock and the shocks emanating from banking instability in the US and Europe. By 2022-23, NPAs had fallen to 3.9 per cent.

Fair enough, the analysts said. However,   sustaining the secular improvement in financial indicators of the previous years would be difficult in 2023-24.  Banks would face a liquidity crunch, with deposits failing to keep pace with growth in loans. The net interest margin would be squeezed and asset quality would suffer from the rapid build-up of loans. Returns were bound to fall. 

Wrong again, it turns out. Yes, banks’ liquidity at the margin was indeed stretched- the incremental credit-deposit ratio for all scheduled commercial banks was over 100 per cent, as the FSR points out. For private banks, the incremental credit-deposit ratio was nearly 120 per cent.  But banks seem to have had no difficulty in passing on the higher costs of deposits to their borrowers. The net interest margin (NIM) fell by only 1 basis point relative to the previous year (3.6 per cent compared to 3.7 per cent).  

How did banks manage to maintain NIM in the face of rising deposit rates? Well, they did so by maintaining a high rate of growth in high-yielding retail products, such as credit cards, personal loans, loans against property, and auto loans. The growth rate in these products in the past two years is a good 7 to 14 percentage points above aggregate loan growth rate of 15.4 per cent and 16.3 per cent in the years 2023-23 and 2023-24, respectively.

In what was predicted to be a challenging year for bank, the return on assets for banks as a whole increased from 1.1 per cent to 1.3 per cent. Apart from NIM staying high, several factors contributed to the improvement: A higher rate of loan growth, lower provisions, higher trading income, and higher fee income. The return on assets for PSBs is 0.9 per cent, pretty close to the figure of 1 per cent that is something of an international benchmark. We seem to be getting back to banking’s heady days of the early 2000s. 

Privatisation of PSBs, promised in successive budgets of the past, has been on hold. The privatisation of IDBI Bank, which was initiated in 2018, is yet to be completed. At a return on assets of 1 per cent, PSBs can generate enough capital through internal surpluses and from the market to sustain themselves. They will not pose large demands on the exchequer. The return to health of PSBs means that privatisation will likely lose its impetus. 

Banks have increased the share of retail and service sectors in total credit over the last two decades. Sustained growth in these sectors has so far not told on asset quality. Gross NPAs in retail loans declined from a high of 2.1 per cent in June 2022 to 1.2 per cent in March 2024. Unsecured retail lending has long been seen as a vulnerable area in retail loans. However, asset quality of unsecured retail lending too is showing improvement, with gross NPA ratio at 1.5 per cent compared to 1.6 per cent a year ago. 

It’s almost as if, after the infrastructure imbroglio of the early 2000s, banks can’t put a foot wrong now. Tighter regulation and supervision, an improvement in risk management at the bank level and better selection of leaders at PSBs through the Financial Services Institutions Bureau have all contributed to the improvement.

Can Indian banking keep going the way it has in the past few years? On the face of it, there seems to be little reason why it can’t. Banking is a play on the economy. The Indian economy looks set to grow at around 6.5 per cent over the long-term. The FSR thinks credit growth of 16-18 per cent can happen without seriously impacting asset quality.  

At the same time, competition for deposits will remain intense. Net financial saving, the FSR notes, has declined to 5.3 per cent of GDP during 2022-23 from an average of 8.0 per cent during 2013-2022. The RBI Annual Report shows that the share of deposits in gross financial savings has declined from a peak of 6.3 per cent in 2016-17 to 4 per cent in 2022-23. 

The crucial question, then, is whether retail loans can continue to drive bank revenues and profits as they have in the recent past. The FSR sounds a note of caution. It points out that household debt to GDP at 40 per cent in India is below that in emerging markets. However, in relation to GDP per capita, it is quite high.  Nevertheless, the record of the past five years suggests that we are still some distance away from the point where banks’ focus on retail loans may turn counter-productive. 

Many have commented on the remarkable resilience the Indian economy has displayed in the post-Covid years in the face of lacklustre global growth. The banking sector’s stability is a key factor underpinning that resilience. Our banking sector model drew scathing criticism from several quarters in the post-reform era. Its remarkable success in recent years should silence critics. 

RBI's growth optimism

Here is a telling quote from the RBI's Monthly Review of the economy which is in line with the upbeat assessment given by the RBI Governor recently. (Please see my previous post):V

There is increasing evidence that in the post-pandemic years, a trend upshift is taking shape, which is shifting India’s growth trajectory from the 2003-19 average of 7 per cent to the 2021-24 average of 8 per cent or even more, powered by domestic drivers.

The growth forecasts for the global economy are downbeat: global economic growth in the next five years will be below the average of the last two decades. Nevertheless, the RBI seems to suggest India can grow at 8 per cent plus on the strength of "domestic drivers". Does the RBI think the Indian economy can grow at 8 per cent even under conditions of weak global growth? Will that be on account of services exports? 

This does seem to be an altogether new appraisal of India's economic prospects. Economists have been telling us for long that an 8 per cent growth rate is out of the question without robust export growth, say, 15 per cent per annum.

There's one thing, though, that puzzles me. The Monthly Review projects growth of 7.6 per cent in 2024-25 but only 6.4 per cent in 2025-26. Will India move towards an 8 per cent trajectory thereafter or have we already move on to such a trajectory? The RBI may clarify.

 

 

A very important statement from the RBI Governor

The RBI Governor, Mr Shaktikanta Das, recently made a statement that hasn't got the attention it deserved. 

The Governor is quoted as saying:

India is at the threshold of a major structural shift in its growth trajectory, moving towards 8 per cent GDP growth in a sustained manner. We are moving towards an annual growth rate of 8 per cent.

This is by far the most optimistic official statement on the Indian economy in a long time. It is not clear what time frame the Governor has in mind for the growth rate of 8 per cent, whether it is a mediium-term forecast or a long-term forecast- the issue of the word "sustained" does suggest a fairly long time horizon.

The Chief Economic Advisor in the finance ministry has been talking of a sustained growth rate of 6.5 per cent. Many analysts have been talking of the potential for the Indian economy to grow at 8 per cent- provided various "big bang" reforms are carried out. What the RBI Governor is saying- if he has been quoted correctly in the media- is that, on present steam, the Indian economy is moving towards an 8 per cent trajectory. 

Any thoughts on this, anybody?

Unbounded optimism about AI

All of us have been reading about AI could turn into a Frankenstein monster and reduce humans to slaves.Economists have been sceptical about the boost to productivity from AI: the general view is that AI can at best sustain America's productivity growth at 2 per cent, which has been its long-term rate. It can't raise the productivity growth rate.

Along comes an article by computer scientist Ray Kurzweil that suggests that AI is about to open the doors to Paradise on earth in the years to come.  He says AI on the threshold of bring about  a transformation in three areas: energy, manufacturing and medicine.

The way to solve the world's energy problem is to rely on solar energy which is available in abundance. The challenge is to find photovoltaic materials that are inexpensive and increase the storage capacity of batteries. That is a chemistry problem- finding what combination of chemicals and materials will help address these issues. Kurzweil tells us how AI will crack this problem:

...AI can rapidly sift through billions of chemistries in simulation, and is already driving innovations in both photovoltaics and batteries. This is poised to accelerate dramatically. ... Once vastly smarter AGI finds fully optimal materials, photovoltaic megaproejcts will become viable and solar energy can be so abundant as to be almost free. 

Manufacturing will change as energy costs fall and also the costs of labour and raw materials. Robotics will reduce labour costs. It will also reduce raw material extraction costs. As for medicine, AI moleuclar biosimulations will reduce the costs implied in clinical trials and also make possible more effective drugs. We can produce medicines tailored to each individual patient. Away with disease! 

Kurzweil says longevity in the US and UK now grows by an extra six to seven weeks ever year. With AI, we may expect life expectancy to increase by 1 year annually. That means, in 30 years,life expectancy in Canada, for instance, will leap from 85 to 115!

Kurzweil's conclusion is breathaking: "This is AI's most transformative promise: longer, healthier lives unbounded by the scarcity and fraitly that have limited humanity since its beginnings. 

Makes me wonder: why on earth are economists fretting about long-term economic growth rates falling in the next ten years? 

Geopolitical risks shoot up: Russia's redline crossed

Two major conflicts have been going on for a while now, one in Ukraine and the other in Gaza. Neither has impacted the world economy in a major way except for a brief period in 2022 when oil prices rose above $100 a barrel.

But we just don't know how long it will remain that way. There has been progressive escalation in the conflict in Ukraine. It appears that a new and dangerous redline has been crossed. Ukraine sent ATACMS (Army Tactile Missile Systems) into Sevastopol in Russia's Crimean region a few days ago. Four were intercepted and one was blown up, it appears, and the debris fell on people holidaying on a beach, with an estimated five children among those killed. The ATACMS were provided by the US.

Quite recently, the Americans lifted an earlier restriction on American weapons being fired into Russia territory with the proviso that the weapons must be for military targets alone. The relaxation by America came following a broad offensive by Russia that threatened to overwhelm Ukraine's defenses in some parts. Ukraine contended that the only way to thwart the Russians was to disable the artillery and other batteries from which Ukrainian positions were being pounded. The Americans relented.

Whether the proviso was observed in the latest salvo is not clear. Some military analysts say that there is an airfield nearby but it is of little value, so the drones were intended for civilian targets. We don't know, for sure. Regardless, the loss of civilian losses has create fury across Russia and there's a demand for a punitive response.

Intelligence on targets is obtained through American satellites. The programming of the missiles is done by American technicians. The Ukrainian contribution, military analysts say, is to press the button. So it wil be hard for the US to disclaim responsibility. 

Russia summoned the American ambassador and conveyed to her that retaliatory measures would follow. There's now speculation on what these measures would entail. One conjecture is that Russia would declare the Black Sea a ' no fly' zone which means American reconnaisance satellites entering the area would be taken out. That would be an act of war. Others suggest the Russians will arm a range of parties - Iran, North Korea, etc- in ways not done earlier. Yet others say Putin will first take the issue to the UN Security Council and prepare the ground for a Russian response.

Whatever the response, it's clear that we now have a significant escalation. Why the financial markets, including our own, have not taken notice is a a mystery. It's hard to see how the global economy will remain unaffected for much longer. 

Why government should be careful in calling in management consultants

 I re-read this year-old interview with economist, Mariana Mazzucato, and I thought should post it  here.

Mazzucato is an economist who thinks the government is a force for good and that the good that governments do has been obscured by the rise of neo-liberal ideas.  She has co-authored a book, The Big Con, which contends that governments harm themselves by hiring big consulting firms to work for them. We have the usual problems, lack of genuine expertise in the firms and conflicts of interest. 

But the real problem, Mazzucato, contends is that it takes interesting work in government away from civil servants and is hence demotivating to them. The answer to finding expertise is to pay civil servants better and to give them challenging assignments,not oursourcing the work of government to consultants.

Here is an excerpt from the interview for those who can't access the interview:

For the past decade, she has waged a sometimes lonely battle to rehabilitate the state’s reputation as an economic motor. Her new book, The Big Con, written with Rosie Collington, argues that consultancies are hobbling governments’ ability to perform that role. In her office, holding a Diet Coke, she says: “For me, the big wake-up call was Brexit [preparations], because [the consultants] were everywhere.” In 2019-20, the British government spent nearly £1bn on strategy and other consultants — to the despair of some MPs. Mazzucato and Collington also widen their critique to include the Big Four accounting firms, such as Deloitte, and outsourcing companies, which carry out chunks of the state’s core functions.

Banks don't have to fear fintech

For some years now, we have been hearing about the fintech threat to banks, including large banks. It was said that these banks would use the internet or mobile to gather deposits and make loans. Thereby, they would dispense with the need for expensive brick and mortar branches. Moreover, they would provide a vastly superior customer experience- lightning fast transactions, bill payments and shopping that would work far more smoothly than anything the big bank had to offer.

Nothing of the sort has happened thus far, as this article makes clear in the case of the UK. (The UK experience is not unique; fintechs have not unseated banks anywhere). Very few fintechs make money, most of them are burning investor cash in garnerning customers. The three leading fintech ventures in the UK have been Revolut, Monzo and Starling. Ten years  after they started off - and ten years is a long time- only Starling  has turned a profit in the year ended March 2023. The other two hope to make profit in the next accounting year.

These three fintechs may have brought in a decent number of customers but they customers use them only to put through transactions on which the banks make a fee. The fintechs have yet to register a meaningful presence in the core banking functions, namely, making deposits and loans. People are not ready to place their savings in a meanginful way with the fintechs- one sure sign: the fintechs have a very low share of salary accounts. Large banks with their brick and mortar visibility inspire more confidence than fintechs. 

If you cannot take care of the funding side, you can't do much on the lending side either. Without low cost deposits, there is little competitive edge to lending. The ones they can lend to are customers whom the traditional banks won't entertain, that is, high-risk customers. Some fintechs claim to have cracked the problem with analytics and stuff but their high level of non-performing assets tells its own story. 

Finally, banks have not been idle in the face of the supposed fintech threat. They have invested hugely in technology and improvements in the customer interface. Some have got into collaboration with fintechs whereby the banks get the benefit of fancy technology and the fintechs collect a decent fee. 

The bottomline: the threatened disruption of the banking industry has not happened at all. If I were a depositor, I would go with a large bank for a simple reason: I know the authorities will not allow it to fail, so my money is safe. With a fintech, I have no such assurance. If the price I have to pay is that it takes more four seconds more to put through a transaction, I can live with that. 

Sceptical voices about AI's impact on economic growth

Will AI transform growth prospects for the world and usher in an era of greater abundance? That is what business executives and management consultants would have us believe. But serious economists are sceptical. Let me cite a few:

Daren Acemoglu of MIT cited here:

The professor ...... anticipates AI will boost GDP growth by only 0.93 percent to 1.16 percent over the next decade.

But even that figure may be too optimistic, he argues, because productivity estimates come from automating "easy tasks" – future tasks may be more complicated and less amenable to automation. He therefore contends there will be a more modest increase in TFP and GDP in the next ten years – on the order of 0.53 percent and 0.90 percent, respectively.

Nobel Laureate David Romer of NYU quoted here:

We’ve benefited from scaling up compute and ingesting a whole lot of data.... ....Scaling up compute is pretty easy. It’s just more machines, more chips. But what’s going to happen is we’re not going to have enough data. 

Charles I Jones of Stanford in a paper at the Jackson Hole Symposium last year:

*Automation has been ongoing for 200 years — stable growth ◦

*Steam engine, electricity, internal combustion, semiconductors ◦

*Maybe A.I. is the latest great idea that will allow 2% growth to be sustained a bit longer

Jones notes that long-term productivity growth in the US has been stable at 2 per cent. He reckons AI will help maintain that rate at best and prevent it from falling.

China's growth outlook: IMF's upward revision

It looks as though the doomsayers who forecast China's gdp growth slowing to 3 per cent are being proved wrong. The IMF has raised its forecast forecast  for China's growth upwards frm 4.5 to 5 per cent for 2024. For 2025, it projects growth of 4.5 per cent. Those are very impressive numbers for an economy of China's size. 

The IMF frowns on China's industrial policy, including the targeting of sectors such as automobiles and chip-making. That is silly- China is not alone in practising industrial policy and the IMF should be criticising the US for its own industrial policies.

The Western media has been feeding negative information about China's growth for years.We have been warned varioiusly of a credit bubble, a real estate bubble and a tech bubble that would disrupt Chinese growth. 

No such disruption has happened. What we see is a deceleration. Partly the deceleration is a function of the sheer size of China's economy. Partly, it is policy-induced. China's policy makers are woried about the pattern of growth, especially the way growth has happened at the cost of macroeconomic stability and inequality. It wants to correct the pattern - and it prepared to sacrifice growth for those reasons. The "crisis" in the Chinese economy is a figment of Western imagination. 

Letting shareholders choose the CEO

CEOs are chosen by boards of directors who are said to represent shareholders. How do boards choose CEOs? They typically go with the choice of the incumbent. If the incumbent recommends an insider, the board will settle for an insider. If the incumbent thinks it better to look for an outsider, the board will go with that. 

Orderly or systematic succession planning is pretty rare. Boards are not disposed to ask a CEO to lave unless there is serious underperformance or a crisis. Boards do not ask themselves in advance: what sort of leader do we need today? An administrator? Somebody who can deal with the outside world especially regulators and government effectively? A technical wizard? A marketing person? Nor is there a rigorous assessment of insiders versus outsiders in relation to a set of requirements. In other words, boards seldom do what textbooks on management prescribe.

If boards do a shoddy job of selecting CEOs, why not let shareholders decide? That's the interesting question posed in an FT article. The author gives to arguments for doing so. Shareholders would have a wider choice. Opening up the job to more competitoin would help keep CEO pay under control. 

The author deals with possible objections:

Too difficult a process? Voting systems already exist. What about the issue of holdings concentrated in the hands of a few mega managers, such as BlackRock and Vanguard? Easy: the underlying owners either allow them to vote on their behalf or they must be polled. There is the problem of shares with unequal voting rights, especially in popular stocks such as Meta or Alphabet. These founder-knows-best-companies are as anti-democratic as China. But at least a shareholder vote might apply pressure. Open elections might discourage some external candidates from coming forward if they are already employed. But isn’t being honest better than sneaking off for interviews?  

Having shareholders choose can't be worse than what happens today, so why not give it a shot? 

Prashant Kishor as Bihar CM?

Poll strategist Prashant Kishor has been giving his latest forecast on the general elections to various channels. He was on India Today yesterday.

The forecast that took my breath away yesterday was about PK himself. He revealed that his party, Jan Swaraj, would be contesting the Bihar assembly elections n 2025. PK is confident that he would win a majority. 

It's one thing to chalk out a winning strategy for an established political brand; quite another to win an election oneself. There is a world of difference, as we management types know, between being a good management consultant and being a successful CEO. This is one forecast that will be watched closely.

As for his forecasts for the general elections, the crucial ones are:

• BJP will get 303 seats (its tally in 2019) or more. BJP tally in North and West will be largely unaffected, will gain in East and South.
• Congress unlikely to add to its tally
• Jagan Reddy set to lose in AP assembly polls

Jaimie Dimon replacement within five years-hopefully

Jaimie Dimon has said he will find a replacement for himself within five years. It appears he's bound to JP Morgan until 2026 through a compensation scheme, so it looks as though the appointment won't happen within the next two years.

Dimon has been CEO for 20 years and he's currently Chairman and CEO. If somebody can't find a successor in twenty years' time, we have a problem. JP Morgan has done well under Dimon, no question. But that isn't a good enough reason for somebody to continue beyond a certain length of time. We don't know what issues have NOT been addressed during a CEO's tenure. That we get to know only after a CEO has left- and, very often, problems that didn't come to light during the CEO's time surface after he has left. GE's Jack Welch was a legend during his tenure. With the passage of time, his reign looks far less attractive than it was made out to be in his time. 

It's hard to say what's an optimal tenure for a CEO. However, in the highly competititve environment of the US, it's fair to say that ten years is long enough. Dimon has lasted twice as long. That doesn't reflect well on him- and much less on the board. Dimon is 68. So the distance between him and the next set of leaders would be at least half a generation. A whole generation would separate him from the rung below. That's not healthy in an organisation. It is incumbent on the board of directors to plan for orderly succession at appropriate intervals. 

There was a parallel to the Dimon situation in India. HDFC Bank had Aditya Puri as CEO for a quarter of a century. When Puri left at 70, it was reluctantly- the regulator would not entertain the idea of any increase in the age limit for CEOs beyond 70. 

There is a term limit for the US president- two terms of four years and no more. In recent years, several presidents- Clinton, Bush, Obama- left office when they were still in their fifties or so and full of beans. The underlying principle is simple enough: institutions need a change at the top at reasonable intervals. If that is true for the United States, the mightiest empire the world has known, it is certainly true for corporations. 

US campus protests: a post-script

In my last post, I wrote about the muted faculty response to the pro-Gaza student protests in the US. Based on my experience at IIMA, I find this not at all surprising. Over the long years I spent there, I found that, on a number of matters of internal governance, faculty response was inadequate. I could cite numerous instances. Let me mention one.

In 2008, IIMA announced a hike in the two year PGP fee from Rs 4.4 lakh to 11.5 lakh, an increase of 155% at one go. The faculty came to know of the biggest fee hike in IIMA’s history via email on convocation day after the board had approved it. Many faculty were busy with the convocation formalities and had not checked their email, so they got to know about it from the newspapers the next day!

There was a bit of a storm in the papers. The former minister for HRD, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, denounced the fee hike saying, ''It is a decision of the elite, by the elite and for the elite.”

A few days later, a faculty meeting was held. A senior faculty member rose to say that the convention had been for fee matters to be brought to the faculty for discussion. He wondered why this had not happened. He was right. The procedure was for the director to set up a committee to look into the costing of the PGP programme and recommend a fee. The proposed fee would be brought to the faculty council and, after approval, would be duly endorsed by the board of governors.  

The then director bristled at the suggestion that the faculty body needed to be consulted in the matter. “Faculty autonomy has always been a myth”, he said blandly, adding, “Financial decisions are always taken by the board.” Going by precedents, this was factually incorrect. But even if it was true, were the board and the director not obliged to provide a rationale for a near tripling of the fee at one go? There has to be a better argument for raising fees than “we can get away with it, so we shall”. So far as we could make out, the increase in fee bore no relationship whatsoever to any escalation in costs.

Institutional autonomy does not mean that the director and the board can do whatever they like. The IIMs are public institutions and are expected to conduct themselves with a measure of transparency and a sense of accountability to the people at large. It was incumbent on the board and the direct to explain why exactly they had gone in for a stupendous increase in fee. They failed to do so. 

In the case of the fee hike, both the faculty body and the board failed to ensure conformity with these basic principles. The board of governors was a mute witness to the director's frontal assault on faculty governance. From that point on, governance at IIMA went inexorably downhill, with the consequences that have inevitably followed, including the passage of IIM Act (Amendment) Bill in parliament last year.  IIMA enjoys considerably autonomy now but it is subject to monitoring- by the government, not the board of governors. Given the conspicuous failures of the board over the years, that is most appropriate. 

 

 

 

Crackdown on pro-Gaza student protestors in the US

Like many others, I have been watching the response of America's great universities to the pro-Gaza student protests with some consternation. I cannot imagine how disallowing peaceful student protests can be consistent with the spirit of academic freedom at all. Several universities have had students evicted by police from the camps that had set up on the campus. Students have been suspended, expelled, arrested. 

One of the things I find disconcerting is that America's star faculty have not been sufficiently forthcoming in defence of the students. There is the odd vote of no-confidence from a section of the faculty in some universities (eg. School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia university) but these are few and far between. There has not been the sort of unequivocal defence of students' right to peaceful protest that one would have expected of American faculty.

My latest article in BS is on this subject, US protests: why are faculty voices muted?

Here is the full text:

FINGER ON THE PULSE
T T RAM MOHAN

US protests: Why are faculty voices muted?

American university campuses erupted in protest last month over the conflict in Gaza. The pro-Palestine protests are still on and have since spread to Europe. These protests have raised fundamental questions about freedom of expression at universities. University administrators (often distinguished academics) have not been able to withstand pressure to silence the protestors. The voices of faculty, too, have been strangely muted. 

In dealing with such protests, universities obviously need to strike a balance between allowing freedom of expression and maintaining order on campus. The American Civil Liberties Union has spelt out ground rules that nobody can quarrel with. 

First, no viewpoint, however offensive, must be censored or disciplined.  Secondly, no student or group should be targeted or intimidated in any way in the name of free speech. Thirdly, universities can place restrictions on the time and place of protests so that the functioning of the university is not disrupted. Fourthly, the police must be called in only as a last resort. Lastly, campus leaders must not yield to political pressures.  

It should not have been difficult for the university authorities to have allowed the protests subject to these rules. Sadly, the situation has got out of hand at many American universities, such as Columbia in New York. Police (including anti-terrorist squads in combat gear) have been called in to clear out encampments of students even where they were not disruptive of normal activities.  The universities’ response to the protests may be disappointing, but nobody should be overly surprised. 

The United States is almost unique in the scale of philanthropic contributions to universities. Donor contributions are typically the single biggest source of finance for universities. Student fees don’t even cover operational costs, let alone capital expenditure.  The more funds a university or college can raise by way of donations, the more it can invest in infrastructure, research, and faculty and hence the greater its stature. Annoying donors is a terrible idea for any university.

In addition, universities get large funds for research projects from the government.   The US Defence Department, for instance, has historically been a major source of funds. Corporations, too, fund research projects. Universities, in turn, invest their endowment funds in corporations. 

Leading donors, major corporations and politicians have not cared to conceal their displeasure over the pro-Palestinian protests on campuses. Many tend to reflexively label the pro-Palestinian protests as anti-Semitism. America’s donors and politicians have been keen to oblige Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who has called on the universities to shut down the protests. 

So deep are the links between universities on one side and the government and the private sector on the other that the universities can’t afford to antagonise either. The students’ demand that the universities divest from corporates with links to Israel is thus a non-starter for most universities. A crackdown on the protestors was inevitable.

It’s not just university administrators who have been timid in responding to outside pressures. Faculty have not been sufficiently forthcoming in support of the students’ right to legitimate protest. At Columbia university, the 111-member university senate considered but did not pursue a vote to censure the university president for her decision to call in the police, among other things.  

At Harvard, about 300 faculty have signed a letter urging the president to negotiate with the student protesters. That is a relatively small number out of the 2400 faculty the university boasts of. Most of the signatories are from the humanities departments. Faculty at Harvard’s famous schools of law, business, medicine, and the departments of physics, chemistry and economics appear largely absent from the list. At a few universities, faculty have passed a vote of no-confidence in the leadership.  Such faculty actions have been pretty rare.

Where, one wonders, are America’s many Nobel Laureates and other thought leaders? Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz, himself a Jew, has decried the “interference in academic freedom”. He has said in an interview, “They (the students) had empathy for what was going on in the world. How could anybody not react after seeing the pictures, after seeing the numbers of people dying, being injured?” Professor Stiglitz is a distinguished exception to the silence of the leaders of America’s academic community.  How come?

Faculty in the US comprise two groups: clinical or adjunct faculty and tenured faculty. Clinical faculty do mostly teaching and are on contract. They would be reluctant to put their jobs on the line by taking a position on such issues. Tenured faculty enjoy complete job security and are not subject to any retirement age. With that sort of protection, people would expect tenured faculty to speak up on issues of academic freedom. 

Alas, that doesn’t happen. For one thing, governance in American academia has changed quite a bit over the decades. American universities are said to be “faculty governed”; that is, faculty are supposed to play an active role in the running of colleges and universities. Over the last two or three decades, however, American colleges have tended to become Dean-centric, which means more power has come to be concentrated in the office of the Dean. Finance, faculty appointment and confirmation, and faculty compensation (including annual increments) are all matters on which  Deans have come to have the larger say.  

The “incentives” that have caused academic administrators to fall in in line with donors and politicians also operate to keep faculty on a leash. Distinguished faculty hold Chairs that are endowed by wealthy donors, whether individuals or companies. Funding for research projects and, broadly, power and influence within the college or university are contingent on faculty keeping administrators and donors happy. 

So faculty may hold forth on human rights abuses and limits on freedom of speech in China, Russia, Myanmar and other places. They may sit on government and regulatory bodies and record stirring notes of dissent. They may write searing critiques of political parties succumbing to powerful lobbies. They may exhort graduating students to stand by the “values” of the university and to speak truth to power. 

Within their own colleges or universities and in their dealings with Deans and Presidents, however, faculty know how to lie low on issues that matter- and not just in the US. Your columnist, who has had a long stint in academia, is happy to share a little secret: The internal culture of academia is not all that different from that of the typical corporation (whose authoritarian culture academics are apt to decry). 

Academics, like sensible people everywhere, know which side their bread is buttered. They understand that the price of annoying administrative leaders and powerful external lobbies is steep. Freedom of expression, “governance” and “values”, then, are strictly for the birds. 

Can India grow faster? The Economist's perspective

The Economist had a special report on the Indian economy recently. It has all sorts of interesting facts and it's written in the easy, readable style one associates with the Economist. At the end of the day, there are only a couple of things one wants to know. What rate of growth can one expect of the Indian economyin the years ahead? What do we do to sustain growth at a brisk pace?

The Economist notes that growth in the decade of NDA rule has been 5.6 per cent, below the overall rate of 6 per cent during the three decades of reforms. It is, of course, true that the slowing down of the Indian economy had to do with the overall slowing down of the global economy during this period, notably during the pandemic. The journal doesn't give a precise projection but it seems to think that sustained growth of 6 per cent should be okay- and even that could prove a challenge. We in India now hope for something closer to 7 per cent.

As to what is to be done to sustain a growth rate of 6 per cent or so, I picked up the following, none of which is novel. I give my comments alongside the idea:

• Boost tax to gdp ratio.: How do we do this when we have been narrowing, instead of broadening the tax base, by raising the threshold for income tax and cutting corporate tax steeply?
• More divestment: Rarely in the past several decades has the divestment target been met. The present government had a huge parliamentary majority, yet found it difficult to accelerate divestment. That is the political reality which cannot be changed easily.
• Cut agricultural subsidies: The Economist grants this is a political minefield. So it is. Even keeping subsidies from growing from the present level would be an achievement
• Better centre-state relations to push through reforms in education, labour, etc. Perhaps, the only answer is to have the same government at the centre and the states. That is, perhaps, part of the motivation for the one nation-one election idea but this is not going to happen quickly. 
• Devolve more powers to the local administration: Political decentralisation, brought about by the forces of democracy, is sought to be countered by growing economic centralisation. Ceding more powers to the local level or to the states is at odds with the perceived need for a strong centre to hold the country together. India, unlike the US, is not a union of states with the states relinquishing powers in favour of the centre. It is a union that has allowed powers to flow to the states but with a distinct tilt in favour of the centre.

That's about it- and there's nothing in the list that lends itself to ready accomplishment. The only possible inference is that we should be happy to grow at 6-7 per cent instead of seeking hard to accelerate it to 8 per cent or more. There is, perhaps, a greater need now to address the question of equity or growing inequalities within the country and to focus more on human development indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy rates, etc. 

Rising inequality is not just an ethical issue or an issue of containing tensions within our society, it is also about recognising that inquality is limiting the possibilities for consumption growth and hence the overall growth rate. As for human development indicators, we need to worry that our indicators are worse than those of many in South Asia including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Let the overall growth rate be. It's time to focus on the quality of life of Aam Aadmi.

 

·        

·         

·         

·         

·      

Gaza conflict: where do we stand now?

Israel has announced that it is pulling out its troops from Khan Younis, the scene of bitter battles between the IDF and Hamas for several weeks. Some reports suggest that Israel has withdrawn all but one of its brigades from Gaza. Israel claims its job is substantially done. The claim has little credibility. Hamas is still standing and the remaining hostages are yet to be returned. So neither of the two objectives of the war set by the government of PM Netanyahu have been met. 

Two well-known blogs, A Son of the American Revolution, and Moon of Alabama, both known for their incisive military analysis, present interesting views here and here. .

Here is Larry Johnson of the first blog:

Israel is losing because it has failed, after six months of lopsided combat, to defeat Hamas and free the hostages. Israel has proved itself to be quite skilled in killing unarmed women, children and elderly. The Izzies sure know how to bomb hospitals, medical clinics, schools, churches, mosques, universities and UN refugee centers. Instead of fortifying the myth of Israel as David fighting the colossus Muslim Goliath, Israel’s military campaign has been an unmitigated public relations disaster. Early claims of beheaded children and mass rapes turned out to be fabrications by a determined Israeli psyops campaign. Public opinion around the world views Israel as a murderous thug. There was a time that Israel could count on having a majority of Western nations in its corner. That time is over.

And here goes Moon of Alabama:

International criticism of Israel has risen to unprecedented levels. Several UN resolutions have condemned it for its war crimes in Gaza. The International Court of Justice has ruled against it.

Only the support from the United States had allowed Israel to continue. But two recent incidents have jeopardized it.

The first was Israel's assassination of seven people who had been working for World Central Kitchen, a U.S. based charity with good connections to Congress. Forty members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, have since spoken out against further unconditional support for Israel. The U.S. government under Joe Biden had to acknowledge that. It finally threatened to end its support for the Israeli government.

Following U.S. threats Israel immediately increased the provision of food to the starving population in Gaza:

The Defense Ministry body that coordinates Israeli activity in Palestinian territories said that 322 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday, the highest one-day total since the beginning of the war.

The second game changing incident was the Israeli attack on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus. A hit on any embassy is a serious crime that concerns all governments in this world. Iran would be fully within its rights to retaliated for such a strike.

The U.S. was extremely concerned over this as any Iranian response might well hit the many U.S. installation in the Middle East and could escalate into a wider war with severe consequences for all sides.

This had to be averted. Iranian media report now that a deal has been made in negotiations between Iran and the U.S. Iran will refrain from a direct attack on Israel if the U.S. guarantees a ceasefire in Gaza.

But does Israel being on the defensive mean that peace will return to Gaza? It still seems unlikely. PM Netanyahu has every interest in continuing the war- the moment the war ends, his government will fall and he will have to face long-standing corruption charges. Hamas' chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, will feel less of a compulsion to pursue peace talks now that Israeli military presence is considerably reduced. He has every incentive to play for higher stakes: the end of Israeli occupation of Gaza and the hand over of the strip back to Hamas.

The big imponderable is the Iranian response to the assassination of one of its generals in Syria, widely ascribed to Israel. Will a response provide the pretext for Israel to launch an assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon? 

 

McKinsey could use some advice- on strategy

 McKinsey has, for some years now, often been making news for quite the wrong reasons. It was in the news when its former partner, Rajat Gupta, went to jail on insider trading charges. It got mixed up with the wrong people in its business in South Africa. It was embroiled in the opiods scandal in the US. There are a few more items on the list.

Currently, it is in the news because it has offered paid leave of several months to those who would like to look for jobs outside the firm. Quite plainly, it wants to shrink. Nothing wrong with that, you would say, except that people expect experts in strategy to plan their growth to avoid hiccups such as largish layoffs. McKinsey's problems, columnist Schumpeter argued in the Economist, arise from having grown far too big to be manageable. It needs to shrink. 

There are other problems, some of which are spelt out in another article.  Strategy, which was the main business for McKinsey, accounts for 10 per cent of its business now. Other businesses, such as digitisation of businesses and ESG, are prone to ups and downs and this renders consultants' businesses cyclical. That means there will be both hiring and firing as in investment banks. A third problem is that, with globalisation in reverse gear, overseas businesses, notably the one in China, may come under stress. Finally, businesses have their own large complements of MBAs now and may not be so much in need of strategy. What they want is people who will implement strategy, produce improvements in operations and profits and help them stay one jump ahead of competition in technology.

McKinsey will have to manage growth hereafter at a pace that helps it preserve its culture and identity. It will have to reinvent itself in ways that help it to remain relevant. In short, it needs to think through its own strategy. 

Why is Mr Modi so popular with the electorate?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took his party to a huge win in 2014 and repeated it in 2019. Going by most forecasts, he is set for a third consecutive win. Many have been puzzling over the amazing electoral success Mr Modi has had. Fund manager Ruchir Sharma provides his own explanation. He says Mr Modi has provided growth with relatively low inflation. For that reason, the electorate is willing to overlook things such as his alleged going after opposition parties on charges of corruption or the supposed curbing of civil liberties. The electorate has done a deal of the sort East Asian economies had done with their rulers earlier:

I think what we are seeing is a kind of tacit deal, in which swing voters accept a democratic recession under Modi, so long as he delivers economic progress. While the hardcore supporters of his Bharatiya Janata party were always going to stand by their leader and the party’s Hindutva ideology, Modi has significantly expanded its traditional base by offering a deal that appeals to an increasing number of young and new voters. This is reminiscent of east Asia after the second world war, when countries such as South Korea and Taiwan put together long runs of rapid growth with low inflation under autocratic leaders, who gave way to genuinely free elections only after their nations reached a middle-income level. Under Modi, India has witnessed relatively robust economic growth, with low and stable inflation — much like the early east Asian model. It also has enjoyed a booming stock market, the rollout of gleaming infrastructure projects and new digital platforms that facilitate the delivery of welfare benefits.

This sound more than a little glib. The UPA government produced simple average growth of 6.6 per cent in its second term on top of 7 per cent growth in its first term. These are both very healthy numbers, yet that could not save the government from defeat in 2014. The NDA government produced growth of 7.38 per cent in its first term, not vastly superior to what the UPA government produced in its second term. In its second term, however, it has produced growth of  4.5 per cent; evidently, that will suffice to get it elected.

It's not at all clear that the Modi government has won on the strength of economic growth alone. There are several other elements that must be factored in. The government has sought to redefine nationalism in very different terms through its projection of Hindutva; that appears to have resonated with large numbers of people, including young voters. It has been successful in reaching welfare benefits- food, cooking gas, health insurance etc- to large numbers of people. There is Mr Modi's personal charisma- he comes across as somebody who's incredibly hard-working and committed to the objective of making India a developed country by 2047.

Lastly, the electorate probably does not see the opposition as shining angels of the protection of civil liberties or tolerance of the opposition. The Indian state has never quite got out of the framework created by the British Raj to perpetuate its rule. No political party can really claim moral superiority on how the state treats its citizens. It is an important area crying out for future reform.

Dealing with inequality: are wealth and income caps the answer?

Inequality today, perhaps, draws more comment than poverty if only because extreme poverty has been successfully tackled in most parts of the world. There are many studies that document increases in inequality (notably the book by Thomas Picketty). Many of these findings are contested- some dispute the contention that inequality is rising. But the fact that there is substantial inequality is not disputed.

Now, we have two books that propose radical solutions. One wants a cap on wealth or savings of $ 10 million. Another argues that nobody should earn more than the current threshold for entering the top 1% of taxpayers ($330,000 in the US). The Economist argues that, whatever the theoretical arguments for limiting inequality, we do not have effective ways to place limits on income or wealth.

First, if we want to cap wealth  or income, it implies a 100% marginal income tax rate above a certain income. That is very difficult to enforce: there would be massive evasion or people would flee to friendlier tax regimes. And if all nations enforced such a marginal tax rate?  The effect on incentives would be devastating:

Imagine a world where any gain above £180,000 a year, or $10m over a lifetime, was forfeit. Highly productive people—such as surgeons and engineers, never mind word wizards like J.K. Rowling—would have no financial incentive to keep working after that point was passed. Perhaps some would carry on toiling out of altruism or for the love of the job. But many would be tempted to kick back, relax and deprive the world of their exceptional skills, drive and imagination.

Consider, too, the incentives such a system would create for entrepreneurs. You have an idea for a better mousetrap. Under the old system, you might mortgage your house to raise cash to build a mousetrap factory, in the hope of making a fortune. Under the new system, you must shoulder the same risks (such as losing your home), for a small fraction of the rewards.

Potentially big ideas would stay small. Even if your mousetrap is so good that the world might reasonably be expected to beat a path to your door, it would be irrational to borrow money to expand production. The financial risks of trying to build a global business fall on you. The rewards go to someone else. Only a mug would take such a bet.

Well, it's important that we steer clear of extreme solutions to inequality. Wherever inequality is rising, we need to fix a few things that Joseph Stiglitz has emphasised several times: the bargaining power of workers, the power of corporations and the way the elite frames rules to suit itself. People will accept even a high level of inequality in society provided they see a certain fairness to it. At the moment, it all seems like a game that is rigged by the rich and the powerful. 

Nuclear war: a close look at its horrors

All of understand that a nuclear war will wipe out much of the planet, that there are enough nuclear weapons with the US and Russia to kill the world's population several times over. But how exactly would a nuclear war unfold? 

The Economist reviews a couple of books that sketch out the nightmare. Let us say North Korea launches a nuclear attack on the USor a Russian submarine fires nuclear missiles off the West Coast of the US.Then, here is a possible sequence:

The American satellites which pick up the North Korean launch have sensors “so powerful they can see a single lighted match from 200 miles away”, she writes. Within 15 seconds radars can work out that the missile is headed for America. It will take just over half an hour to arrive. Once the president has been briefed he has six minutes to make a choice.

A Russian submarine off America’s west coast could launch its full complement of missiles at all 50 states at once in 80 seconds. Even if an American submarine was close behind it could not fire a torpedo in that time, notes one expert. That fact is said to have shocked America’s navy chief when it was revealed to him in 1981. Missiles launched from close to the American coastline would take little over seven minutes to hit their target.

American missiles bound for North Korea must overfly Russia by dint of geography. American leaders cannot get Russia’s president on the phone. Russia’s sub-par early-warning satellites, which have indeed been known to confuse clouds for plumes, mistakenly see hundreds of missiles incoming. The Kremlin attacks America. America responds. There are 100 “aimpoints”—jargon for targets—in the greater Moscow area alone.

Another book shows how deeply the scientific community is divided over the issue:

Some are gung-ho about the importance of nuclear deterrence, brandishing charts which show how deaths from major wars plummeted after the invention of the bomb. Others are equivocal, expressing opposition to nuclear weapons while insisting that someone has to ensure that the ones which exist remain safe and reliable. Still others seem deeply conflicted, preferring to emphasise the civilian applications of their research. “I wonder if the activists on the outside understand that there are those of us on the inside that share many of their goals,” says one scientist at Los Alamos, professing support for (eventual) disarmament. “That’s not an extreme position here at all.”

You could say mankind has carried on like this for over six decades and that deterrrence has worked. But the men who manage nuclear arsenals, it appears, continue to have sleepless nights. 

Conflict in Gaza: what does Israel want now?

It is three months now since the Gaza conflict erupted. The slaughter continues. We have had several developments over the past few days. One, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has announced a withdrawal of some of its forces stationed in Gaza. Two, the number two person in the Hamas leadership was assasinated in Beirut- nobody doubts that is the work of Israel. Three, an Israeli strike killed a senior Iranian commander in Syria. Four, the US has announced the withdrawal of its aircraft carrier, USS Gerald Ford, from the Mediterranean.

What do we make of all this? Well, the Israelis clearly want to scale down their operations in Gaza. They recognise that the complete elimination of Hamas, their stated goal, cannot be realised in quick time. They wish to move on to more focused operations that target the Hamas leadership instead of the all-out war we have seen thus far.

That much is clear enough. The two assasinations are a provocation. The killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut flouts the warning of Hezbollah chief Nasrallah that assasinations by Israel on Lebanese soil are a red line Israel should not cross. The assasination in Syria shows the red rag to the Iranian bull, the principal backer of Hezbollah. Israel knows it must expect a strong reaction and yet goes ahead- clearly, a strong reaction is what it wants. A strong reaction would mean that the managed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah would move to a higher level and draw in Iran, inevitably drawing in the US as well.

There are both strategic and political calculations involved in moving towards such a confronation. Israel views Hezbollah as a far bigger threat than Hamas and Iran an even bigger threat. An estimated 75,000 Israelis have been moved out of the border with Lebanon and relocated elsewhere. They refuse to go back until the Hezbollah threat on the border is removed. At the very least, Israel would like Hezbollah to move to the north of the Litani river with a buffer zone that is protected by, say an UN force. Israel cites an old UN resolution in support of that demand.

Hezbollah has never accepted that interpretation of the UN resolution and it is no mood to oblige. The Americans are using diplomatic channels to pressure Lebanon and Hezbollah into accepting Israel's demand. Israel has said that if diplomacy fails, it will have to do the job of evicting Hezbollah itself.

That would mean a serious escalation of the conflict in Gaza. But that is precisely what the present leadership in Israel seems to want- a confrontation with Iran that addresses this threat once and for all,of course, with the help of the US. 

There is a cold political calculation underlying all this. Israel's PM Benajmin Netanyahu knows that any end to the war will mean an enquiry into the lapses that resulted in the October 7 attack by Hamas and a demand for his ousted. Once ousted, he faces corruption charges and the prospect of jail. A prolongation of the war helps the PM avoid that unpleasantness. 

Alastair Crooke,  a former British diplomat with vast experience in the region, has been making some of these points for quite some time now. He argues that the Gaza quagmire for Israel is not what its leadership had expected- they had thought the mighty IDF would vanquish Hamas in next to no time. Crooke writes, "One man -- a retired Maj. General Brik, a highly respected military officer -- warned PM Netanyahu personally that a quagmire trap in Gaza was a true risk. The military establishment did not like hearing his warning.  Now it is clear; Major General Brik was right. He said a few days ago that ‘the number of Hamas casualties on the ground is much lower than what the IDF reports.’ 

Crooke quotes another retired general as saying 'I cannot see any signs of collapse of the military abilities of Hamas – nor in their political strength with in Gaza'." He goes on to suggest that Israel's getting involved in a prolonged war may have to do something beyond the Iran threat and PM Netanyahu's calculations. 

What has happened in Israel over the years is a pronounced shift towards the right and a progessive embrace of the idea of a Greater Israel. Crooke quotes an Israeli historian, Martin Zimmerman, on what has resulted from that idea:

"Jewish nationhood in the Land of Israel went through a process of nationalism, racialism and ethnocentrism. It created a situation of being unable to reach a modus vivendi with the neighbouring world.......And that is the problem: Once you have embarked on the path, it's difficult to leave it without undergoing another catastrophe."

What is unfolding in the Middle East now thus has the makings of a Greek tragedy, one that could plunge the world into turmoil through this year. Only one power on earth can prevent it from happening, the US. That helps us to connect the fourth dot mentioned at the outset, the departure of the US strike carrier group from the Mediterranean. The carrier group was sent in to reassure Israel after the Hamas attack of October 7. Can we hope that the removal of the carrier group is meant to convey to Israel: we are with you but don't push us too far? 

My views on the outlook for the Indian economy

 Financial Express carried an interview with me earlier in the week.