India (64 page)

1.
Author’s interview with C. K. Ranganathan, 27 January 2009.

2.
www.atatwork.org/page/384
;
Tehelka
, 29 August 2009;
www.truthdive.com/tag/stayfree
.

3.
Author’s interview with Daman Singh (Manmohan Singh’s daughter), 2 June 2010; Jatin Gandhi, “Manmohan’s India,”
Open
, 8 August 2009; interview with Manmohan Singh on
The Charlie Rose Show
, 21 September 2004, available at
www.tinyurl.com/333rgco
.

4.
This refers to the period 1861–1900. See Meghnad Desai, “Drains, Hoards and Foreigners: Does the 19th Century Indian Economy Have Any Lessons for the 21st Century India?,” Reserve Bank of India P. R. Brahmananda Memorial Lecture, London, 20 September
2004. Desai draws on data in P. R. Brahmananda,
Money, Income, Prices in 19th Century India: A Historical, Quantitative and Theoretical Study
, Mumbai, 2001.

5.
T. N. Srinivasan and Suresh D. Tendulkar,
Reintegrating India with the World Economy
, Washington DC, 2003, p. 13.

6.
Business Week
, 23 January 2006.

7.
Desai, “Drains, Hoards and Foreigners.”

8.
Manmohan Singh,
India’s Export Trends and the Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth
, Oxford, 1964, p. v.

9.
Ibid., p. 303.

10.
Ibid., p. 337.

11.
Private information.

12.
See Vijay Joshi and I. M. D. Little,
India’s Economic Reforms, 1991–2001
, Oxford, 1996; Valerie Cerra and S. C. Saxena, “What Caused the 1991 Currency Crisis in India?,”
IMF Staff Papers
, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2002; Arjun Sengupta, “Financial Sector and Economic Reforms in India,”
Economic and Political Weekly
, Vol. 30, No. 1, 7 January 1995.

13.
Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw,
The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy
, New York, 2002 (first publ. 1998), p. 184.

14.
See Ramesh Chandra, “Reinvestigating Export-Led Growth in India Using a Multivariate Cointegration Framework,”
The Journal of Developing Areas
, Vol. 37, No. 1, Fall 2003, p. 83, Table 4.

15.
Interview with Manmohan Singh for the PBS series
Commanding Heights
, 2 June 2001,
www.tinyurl.com/3xykvq7
.

16.
Interview with P. Chidambaram for the PBS series
Commanding Heights
, 2 June 2001,
www.tinyurl.com/34wedxm
.

17.
Private information.

18.
Private information.

19.
Rakesh Batabyal (ed.),
The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches: 1877 to the Present
, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 599–604.

20.
See Ajoy Bose,
Behenji: A Political Biography of Mayawati
, New Delhi, 2008, p. 135.

21.
The source for my graph is Government of India,
Economic Survey 2009–10
, New Delhi, 2010, Table 7.1 (A), Table 7.1 (B), pp. A81–2, originating from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS), Kolkata. The figure of $177.2bn for the financial year 2010–11 has been estimated assuming a rate of growth of 20.02 percent, which was the average rate of growth of Indian exports between 2000–2001 and 2008–9 using data in $m in
Economic Survey
. (The figures in Rs. crore in
Economic Survey
give a slightly higher growth rate of 20.57 percent because of exchange rate fluctuations; the DGCIS converts rupee to dollar figures using a simple average of the monthly exchange rate issued by the Reserve Bank of India.) The year 2009–10 was not considered in calculating the average rate of growth because it was an outlier, caused by the effects of the global recession.

22.
See
pewglobal.org/database
.

23.
Sanjaya Baru, “The Turnaround Man,”
Tehelka
, 4 April 2009.

24.
Bloomberg.com
, 3 November 2009.

25.
See Christopher Andrew,
The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
, London, 2009, pp. 444–47.

26.
See
www.pmindia.nic.in/lspeech.asp?id=695
.

27.
Sandeep Pandey, “Diagnosing the Doctor,”
Tehelka
, 4 April 2009.

28.
Rediff.com
, 23 March 2008.

29.
Michael Lewis, “The End,”
Portfolio.com
, 11 November 2008.

30.
Kaushik Basu, “Markets, Laws and Governments,” in Bimal Jalan (ed.),
The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects
, New Delhi, 2004 (first publ. 1992).

31.
The Industrial Disputes Act came into force in April 1947.

32.
Private information.

33.
Mail Today
, 18 January 2010.

34.
Ibid., 2 September 2009.

35.
Times of India
, 18 October 2006. See
www.aahoa.com
.

36.
Author’s interviews with K. Srinivas Reddy, 12 February 2002 and 7 April 2010.

37.
Rahul Pandita, “We Shall Certainly Defeat the Government,”
Open
, 17 October 2009. This is Muppala Laxman Rao’s most detailed interview.

38.
Author’s interview with Rahul Pandita, 10 April 2010.

39.
See Jaideep Saikia (ed.),
Frontier in Flames: North East India in Turmoil
, New Delhi, 2007.

40.
See Sanjib Baruah,
Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of Northeast India
, New Delhi, 2005.

41.
Author’s interview with Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, 19 May 2010.

42.
Author’s interview with Munish Tamang, 21 May 2010.

43.
Author’s interview with Rahul Pandita, 10 April 2010.

44.
Some of this material is taken from my article “The Longest March,”
Telegraph Magazine
, 11 May 2002, and from interviews done at that time. Background information comes from K. Srinivas Reddy and from other local journalists and Maoist sources who wished to remain anonymous.

45.
Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs Annual Report 2008–09, New Delhi.

46.
Author’s interview with a CRPF constable, 30 November 2009.

47.
Open
, 22 May 2010.

48.
Outlook
, 19 April 2010.

49.
Tusha Mittal, “I Am the Real Desh Bhakt,”
Tehelka
, 21 November 2009.

50.
Author’s interview with K. P. Unnikrishnan, 24 January 2009. A couple of months after this interview, I met a man at a party in a Knightsbridge wine bar. He seemed like the usual young Indian banker, doing well at Barclays Capital and zipping between the UK, the United States and Asia. Somehow the subject of the first Gulf War came up, and he told me—over the noise of a white rapper and entourage, who were shooting a video in the bar—how he had been caught, as a terrified teenager, in the desert between Kuwait and Jordan, parched and starving. The meeting between Saddam Hussein and K. P. Unnikrishnan had probably saved his life.

51.
Jyoti Punwani, “Memories of a Naxalite Friend,”
Times of India
, 20 April 2008. See also “Regular Rebels,”
IndianExpress.com
, 27 September 2009;
Open
, 27 February 2010; Jyoti Punwani, “The Kobad Ghandy I Knew,”
Hindustan Times
, 22 September 2009; and Swapan Dasgupta, “Absolving Maoists of Their Crimes,”
Pioneer
, 27 September 2009.

52.
Visit to Tihar jail, 13 November 2009.

1.
Forbes.com
, 3 May 2008;
www.CarlosSlim.com/biografia.html
.

2.
Economic Times
, 22 June 2010.

3.
See Peter Cappelli et al.,
The India Way: How India’s Top Business Leaders Are Revolutionizing Management
, Boston, 2010, pp. 132–38.

4.
Author’s interview with Sunil Bharti Mittal, 24 June 2010.

5.
Interview with CNBC-TV18, available at
MoneyControl.com
, 26 June 2010. See also
Economic Times
, 24 June 2010.

6.
Forbes.com
, 30 April 2008.

7.
Matthew Kaminski, “Heavy Mittal,”
Wall Street Journal
, 4 February 2006.

8.
Swraj Paul,
Beyond Boundaries: A Memoir
, New Delhi, 1998, p. 159.

9.
Independent
, 25 August 1996.

10.
Full disclosure: I was a member of the India–UK Round Table before being sacked for insubordination.

11.
Quoted in Katherine Frank,
Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
, London, 2001, p. 434.

12.
See
Daily Telegraph
, 15 August 2007;
Hindu
, 24 June 2007;
Sunday Times
, 11 October 2009.

13.
Guardian
, 31 March 2010;
CNN-IBN
, 1 April 2010.

14.
Economic Times
, 28 March 2010.

15.
Raju Bist, “Ambani: A Tycoon for All Seasons,”
Asia Times
, 9 July 2002.

16.
Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050
, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 99, 1 October 2003.

17.
Dheeraj Sinha, “Three Generations, One Big Market,” Esomar, Asia Pacific 2008,
www.tinyurl.com/2vzgh8s
.

18.
Private information.

19.
India’s Rising Growth Potential
, Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 152, 22 January 2007.

20.
Author’s interview with Dilip Mathur (pseudonym), 13 November 2009.

21.
Financial Times
, 10 January 2008;
Time
, 14 December 2007.

22.
Simon Winder had a terrible experience with a Double Decker bar in Mussoorie.

23.
www.cadburyindia.com/media/press39.asp
.

24.
Economic Times
, 24 February 2010;
Financial Times
, 1 June 2009;
Sunday Times
, 29 November 2009;
PTI
, 8 February 2010; background research on Vishnu Garden by Mandakini Gahlot, with additional information from Sanjay Purohit of Cadbury India, 4 September 2009.

25.
Mail Today
, 7 March 2010; ibid., 3 November 2009;
IBNLive.com
, 30 December 2009.

26.
Rediff.com
, 15 March 2001.

27.
Aniruddha Bahal, “T’hell’ka: Sting of the Devil,”
Outlook
, 26 March 2001.

28.
These words are all taken from the transcripts of the secretly recorded Tehelka tapes; I have elided conversations which took place at different times, in order to show the consistency of the conspirators’ approach. See
www.tehelka.com/channels/investigation/investigation1.htm
.

29.
IBN Live
, 29 December 2009.

30.
See Savita Sharma,
Poverty Estimates in India: Some Key Issues
, Asian Development Bank, May 2004; Planning Commission,
Report of the Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor
, New Delhi, July 1993. In 1999–2000, a different method was used to
record household consumption; it suggested levels of poverty had dropped substantially, but this data is now seen as over-optimistic. See Angus Deaton and Valerie Kozel, “Data and Dogma: The Great Indian Poverty Debate,”
World Bank Research Observer
, 2005. A report for the government Planning Commission in 2009 by the economist Suresh D. Tendulkar proposed a new method of calculation, stating that India’s poverty lines underestimated the extent of the problem. Background research on poverty data by Aaditya Dar.

31.
This data has been drawn from Government of India,
Economic Survey of India 1998–1999
, Table 10.6; Government of India Press Information Bureau,
Poverty Estimates for 2004–05
, New Delhi, 2007.

32.
Government of India Press Information Bureau,
Poverty Estimates for 2004–05
.

33.
World Bank,
Global Economic Prospects
, Washington DC, 2009, p. 47, Table 1.5.

34.
See Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion,
The Developing World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty
, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4703, August 2008, p. 11, footnote.

35.
Ibid., p. 34, Table 7.

36.
Ibid.; World Bank,
Global Economic Prospects
, p. 47, Table 1.5.
Global Economic Prospects
projects that between 2005 and 2015 the percentage of Indians living below $1.25/day and $2.00/day will fall by 16.2 and 17.7 percent respectively. The data for 2025 is speculative and assumes that poverty reduction will take place at the same rate as projected here for the period 2005–15. A more pessimistic study suggests that poverty rates in India may fall more slowly: see Global Monitoring Report 2010,
The MDGs after the Crisis
, 2010, pp. 115–16, Tables 4A.1 and 4A.2.

37.
See World Bank, PovcalNet Online Poverty Analysis Tool,
www.tinyurl.com/35neduw
.

38.
Economist
, 4 March 2010.

39.
Author’s interview with Rajeev Samant, 1 February 2009.

40.
Author’s interview with Dattu Mahadu Vanse, 31 January 2009.

1.
IBN Live
, 10 December 2007.

2.
Mail Today
, 29 May 2010.

3.
USmagazine.com
, 9 December 2009;
Mail Today
, 11 December 2009.

4.
New York Post
, 4 September 2009.

5.
The Week
, 9 July 2000.

6.
Author’s interview with Venkatesh, 1 October 2008.

7.
Author’s interview with Nanjunde Gowda, 1 October 2008.

8.
Sugata Srinivasaraju, “Obama Comes Home,”
OutlookIndia.com
, 26 November 2009.

9.
Author’s interview with Dhruv (pseudonym), 4 October 2008.

10.
P. R. Dhar, Simplex senior management adviser, 6 February 2010.

11.
Jaikishandas Sadani and Bithaldas Mundhra (eds.),
Indian Culture: Encyclopaedic Survey in Eight Volumes
, Bharatiya Vidya Mandir and Simplex Infrastructures Ltd., n.d.

12.
Dinesh C. Sharma,
The Long Revolution: The Birth and Growth of India’s IT Industry
, New Delhi, 2009, pp. 6–11.

13.
See
Frontline
, 21 April–4 May 2007; Itty Abraham,
The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State
, London, 1998.

14.
See my article “Another Country, Another Era,”
India Today
, 26 December 2005.

15.
Quoted in Sharma,
Long Revolution
, p. 107.

16.
Ibid., pp. 212–16.

17.
Nandan Nilekani,
Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century
, New Delhi, 2008, p. 106.

18.
See Sugata Srinivasaraju,
Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue: The Anxieties of a Local Culture
, Bangalore, 2008, pp. 118–25.

19.
Pulapre Balakrishnan, “Benign Neglect or Strategic Intent? Contested Lineage of Indian Software Industry,”
Economic and Political Weekly
, 9 September 2006, p. 3870.

20.
Quoted in Sharma,
Long Revolution
, p. 398.

21.
Private information.

22.
Author’s interview with Mack (pseudonym), 25 October 2009.

23.
Author’s interview with Ramappa (pseudonym), 2 and 3 October 2008.

PART III
SAMAJ • SOCIETY