Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Why and how had India’s economic condition become as precarious as it was in 1991? There were multiple reasons, explains Sanjaya Baru in 1991 . (1) Successive government policies over the previous decade had been adding to increasingly unsustainable government debt. (2) Forex reserves were falling as India continued to have few goods or services to sell abroad. (3) The USSR fell, and overnight a country with whom India traded a lot and in non-US dollars had ceased to exist. (4) Saddam invaded Kuwait, oil prices spiked and that was the straw that finally broke the Indian camel. (5) From 1989, India had a string of coalition governments. I will explain next why that last point mattered.   When we think of the 1989-91 period, we think of short-lived governments and unknown compromise candidates suddenly becoming Prime Ministers. (1) It also meant that no meaningful policy decisions could be made by such coalition governments as things began to slide downwards. (2) Global cr...

“Any explanation is better than none.” -          Nietzsche We love to cite reasons for everything that happens. If the reason is correct, all the better; but that’s not a must. Obviously, nobody says that to themselves, but if you check out many of the “reasons” floating around, you’d see what I mean. It turns out that we don’t just stop at attributing causes to real life events. People even try and find root causes for battles from movies , like the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back ! So what were the reasons Darth Vader and Co couldn’t crush and kill the rebels in that battle? “Don’t place unaccountable religious fanatics in wartime command, and never underestimate a hegemonic power’s ability to miscalculate against an insurgency.” Well ok, those reasons would apply even today in the real world; so maybe this analysis wasn’t a total waste of time after all! A comment on Slashdot to the above analysis said: “…peo...