While ideological blinkers blind one to change that one does not wish to see, statistics and opinion surveys, too, have their limitations in a complex polity like India.
While UPA2's handling of immediate foreign policy challenges can be criticised, it would be difficult to challenge the long-term relevance of the principles that define the Manmohan Singh Doctrine.
If the World Bank does not alter its shareholding structure to reflect the shifts in global distribution of income and economic power, its role may get marginalised as regional institutions fill the vacuum.
To be sure, China is nowhere as powerful as the U.S., but it has acquired the ability to impose its will on individual nations around the world. From Australia to Germany, South Africa to South Korea, political leaders are careful not to rub China the wrong way.
Few disagree with the view that the 21st century will witness the return of Asia to the centrestage of global economic activity.
The liberal fiscal spending of the 2004-08 period was made possible both by rising government revenues and national income growth and by relative comfort on the external side. After 2009,these pillars of growth began to wobble. By 2012, they were shaking.
A trilateral initiative by the U.S., China, and India in the Gulf, aimed at facilitating a resolution of historic problems in the region, would benefit global growth and stability.
During the 1990s, when India opened up to foreign investment, Japan was so mesmerised by the China opportunity that it chose to yield market space across a wide swathe of industries to South Korean competitors.
Battles, on the military and the economic front, are first lost in the minds of the strategists for want of ideas before they are lost on the battleground for want of armoury.
Indian politics has a way of taking a curious turn and surprising the wisest of pundits.
Prime ministers with full majority have behaved differently from each other. Jawaharlal Nehru was a leader who ruled by consensus while Indira Gandhi was considered more unilateral in her approach.
Obama's starting point was not as low as Manmohan Singh's starting point, and Obama's rise was not as sharp.
For all the criticism I've been showered with - people calling me a betrayer, a backstabber - frankly, the only criticism I have of Manmohan Singh is that he weakened the office of the prime minister, and he brought down the dignity of the office.
Civil servants and government functionaries do not write memoirs because they hope to get more government jobs or assignments.
I have not broken any promises, but I have full freedom to say or write about what others have said to me during my tenure in the PMO.
A politician normally flatters you in your face and criticises you behind your back.
When I was in the PMO, Digvijaya Singh used to call me whenever he wanted to see the PM. He used to go through me. He is under compulsion to criticise me, but I am under no compulsion to criticise him.
I think the government lost control over fiscal policy in UPA-2. But it is possible to suggest that the momentum of the populism of UPA-1 did the damage when the economy slowed down, but government spending could not.
Rajiv Gandhi could have certainly attempted to form a Congress-led coalition government in 1990.
The reason a Congress-led coalition didn't happen in 1990 was because it is entirely possible that Rajiv Gandhi himself wasn't sure how the Congress party would evolve in that context.
