Why Raj Thackeray blew it

10

I met Raj Thackeray in his formidable fortress in Shivaji Park, Dadar a couple of years ago, accompanied by two Bollywood celebrities from the land of Pataliputra , Prakash Jha and Shekhar Suman, just when the initial hullabaloo over Railway recruitments had suddenly surfaced. There were several protestations, vitriolic statements were made with great panache, all of it deliberately incendiary, of course. The city of Mumbai seemed headed for a most unwarranted confrontation , and even then the UP bhaiyaas were the principal targets. Years later, thanks to an essentially gullible electronic media and an impressionable public being swayed by malicious propaganda, it has assumed unnerving proportions. This time , unless intelligently addressed , the "outsider" conflict carries an implied threat of a permanent mental divide , simmering discontent that can on an impulsive reaction , provoked by political expediency, explode. The last thing a growing India needs....

The World Is Not Flat, Mr Friedman!

9

What's good for the US is good for the New York Stock Exchange. But what's good for the New York Stock Exchange might not be good for the United States. William Martin , Jr ( 1906-1998) Chairman, US Federal Reserve System Morgan Stanley had just completed a whirlwind road-show across India, ensnaring giddy-headed investors into buying its much-hyped IPO for a mutual fund, marketed with such deceptive strategy, that the gullible greedy lot had thought they had bought into an emerging Reliance share. Some of India's leading hot-shot merchant bankers had duplicitously allowed a false notion to pervasively prevail that Morgan Stanley was like glittering gold; an investment that was a roadmap to El Dorado. That was 1994-95. As I write this column, Morgan Stanley is close to being permanently vanquished, its stock tumbling dramatically, leaving it to Mitsubishi bank for a complete buy-out. Even in....