On the road to Liberty

The growing scandal over a newly built apartment tower in Mumbai, and the collapse of an old building in Delhi on the night of November 15, killing over 60 people reflect the peril that haunts Indians everyday - lack of secure property right, and strangulating regulation. The result is the pyramid of corruption that weighs heavily on citizens, and retards India's progress. This kind of systemic corruption cannot be dealt with by symbolic resignation of a minister. A shorter version of this article has been published in the Wall Street Journal , on 17 November 2010. Just a week ago President Barack Obama received repeated applause from Indian Parliamentarians for saying that India has risen, not merely rising! In the week since, Indians have been witness to the scourge that has held India back, corruption, with a capital C. President Obama’s host in Mumbai, Mr Ashok Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, resigned due to serious allegations of malpractices surrounding an apartment ...

President Barack Obama will be coming to India later this week. He is the third US president to visit India in this decade, and the only one to have done it so early in his term. Yet, the visit has not triggered any great popular interest. In my article titled " In Bush's footsteps in India " in the Walls Street Journal Online, published on November 2, 2010, I outline the possible issues on the agenda, and the reason for the lack of expectation from this visit. In a longer version of the article " Obama calls on India: Is anyone listening? " I contrast the different political contexts between President Obama's visit now, and that of his predecessor President Bush in 2006. I suggest that President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared a political vision for India, and that enabled the two leaders to stake so much political capital on issues such as the civilian nuclear deal that the two signed. In contrast, India does not seem to figure significant...