On the road to Liberty

The current campaign against corruption provides a golden opportunity to Dr Manmohan Singh to lead from the front. There is an urgent need for speeding up the process of economic, administrative and judicial reforms, not only to push the economy to a higher growth path, but also to help reduce the scope for corruption. Being the Prime Minister of India, he must spell out the options before the country. Then it would be for the people to decide in a democracy. Typically, corruption, or rent seeking, is a consequence of the gulf that exists between supply and demand for any goods or services due to regulatory interventions. Despite, two decades of economic reforms, the regulatory and policy environment in many areas of the economy continue to be quite restrictive, and discretionary powers prevail. It is particularly in those areas where corruption continues to prevail. The current focus on corruption should help us investigate these details and come up with systemic reforms. Any a...

The sense of urgency Prime Minister Manmohan Singh displays in taking stock of the court verdict on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak is to appease anti-capitalists of various persuasions. Few people care about the real victims of the Bhopal tragedy. There is much outrage over the fact that Warren Anderson, the then chairman of the parent company has not been charged. My article titled Does Anyone Care About Bhopal's Real Victims? was published in The Wall Street Journal on June 14th 2010. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked senior ministers Monday to take stock of last week's court verdict on the 1984 Bhopal gas leak and report back within 10 days. This belated sense of urgency is meant to placate everyone from anti-American groups to anti-industrialists, antitrade advocates and antitechnology believers who are up in arms over the court's light sentencing of executives implicated in the accident. Lost in the public outpouring are the long-suffering victims of the tragedy—and the is...