If people don't want blue-collar work, our labour costs will remain high and our competitiveness low.
Good intentions and grand theories do not make a good programme. Programmes work best when they're based on a detailed understanding of the problem being solved and how they are implemented on the ground.
If democracy is to be an articulation of mutual respect, a leader in a democracy leads by showing respect to all.
Our democratic culture does not prioritise protecting an individual's right to live life her way, especially if that is not our way or the way of the community.
It is undeniable that the looming environmental crisis is partly the consequence of population growth.
There is nothing remotely dignified about sorting through rotting trash to find something to feed your child, or asking someone for money because you have none (anyone who has contrived to give people money before they had to ask will never forget the look of gratitude in their eyes).
Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.
One big mistake that we made in Delhi is that we made it a low-rise city which means that rich people have nice green colonies while the poor live in dusty areas.
Climate change is something that we cannot fix alone - it is the original collective action problem - it will not work unless almost all the large economies of the world act together.
My parents were not poor, I mean we were a very average middle-class family of academics, but my grandfather happened to have built house literally next to one of Kolkata's largest slum.
To insist that no one can support the interests of the aam aadmi without being one himself is like saying that no man can support women's rights.
Independence day is an interesting time to reflect on our strange fealty to institutions that the British left us, including those that were explicitly set up to be used against us.
This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.
Catastrophic health shocks do enormous damage to families both economically and otherwise, and are easy to insure, because nobody gets them on purpose. On the other hand, insurance policies that only treat certain catastrophic illnesses are hard to comprehend, especially of you are illiterate and unused to the legalistic nature of exclusions etc.
One problem with globalisation is that bad ideas seem to travel faster than good ones; first there was smearing tomato ketchup on everything; then drinking sugar-soaked cocktails ('Cosmo'-politanism) instead of our traditional whisky soda, and now this idea that we should abandon the poor to their fate in order to protect their dignity.
If you want to leave move money in the hands of poor people, you cannot do it through personal income tax cuts. You have to just give them money.
I have always found it difficult to wrap my head around population policies.
Insurance is important for protecting the health of people and Ujjwala is quite useful to low-income women.
Anyone who has a child knows the importance of not over-playing your hand. He was up all night playing some game on his smartphone and you feel like saying that if it happens again the phone is gone. Forever. Till he is old enough to buy his own. Till then he can have your old Nokia.
The AAP from the beginning made it clear that they were about changing policy and not being a symbol of purity in a corrupt world.
