Economy
Economy: The missing growth stimulus
WITH continuing demand recession, decelerating industrial growth, persisting investment slowdown, the uncertain export prospects, and above all, a big decline in the overall business confidence, the outlook for the economy this fiscal has turned distinct ly bearish. For an economy already witnessing a slowdown for the past four years, the portents are ominous and the situation calls for urgent policy initiatives to reverse the downtrend.

Globalisation and public goods
COME weekend and it is time to go shopping. People hustle through crowded bazaars and air-conditioned supermarkets, bags filled with various goods. Rarely, if ever, has someone been seen shopping for traffic lights. Yet, few of these weekend shoppers can do without them. They would be stuck in gridlock traffic or unable to cross busy streets and highways. The reason nobody carries traffic lights in their shopping cart is that everybody expects to find them outside, as a public good. Inside the market, t he shopper's attention is focussed on private goods.

Second generation reforms -- Implementation, the key
TALKING about Second generation reforms has become the fashion among people who do understand some economics. It is a hard fact, however, that even the masters of the economy are not only not clear about the path of the reforms, they also have serious di fferences on the areas, the structure and the speed with which they should be carried out.

Countering global economic slowdown
FALTERING growth in the US, Japan and the OECD nations and the spectre of recession have triggered speculation on or whether or not the trough is in sight. Since markets are attuned to business cycles, fluctuations in income, employment, investment and p rices are inevitable. As a matter of eventuality, what counts is the rate of decline in various economic activities -- a fast rate could precipitate a crisis much before the actual bottom is reached. Worldover, financial circles are beginning to feel tha t the boom and bust cycles are rather antiquated.

Editorial
Economy disinterest
ON ANY SCALE of earnestness to battle a slowdown, the US is surely scoring more points than India with Washington unveiling huge tax cuts to back Fed's easing of interest rates. The Finance Ministry and the RBI have responded with windy meetings, with th e next scheduled for July 13. The US Fed rate today is 3.75 per cent and the maestro, Mr. Allan Greenspan, is not averse to further cuts if need be though he may not be explicit. On Mint Street, officials are analysing data to get at a possible co-relati on between growth and low interest rates as the last Bank Rate cut followed by banks dropping their prime lending rates did not help activate capital investment.

Miscellaneous
Idol worship
IT HAS become the habit of Indians to raise those we fancy to demi-god status and pay obeisance from a distance. No one stops to think reasonably before undertaking this exercise. Nine times out of ten the idol we worship has feet of clay. The irony is t hat the adoration continues unabated even after this embarrassing fact has been discovered.

Politics
Sowing wind, reaping whirlwind
THE midsummer silly season and the rioting season are as one. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis riot in Bradford, Oldham and, most recently, in the neighbouring Lancashire town of Burnley; and the politically correct broadsheets -- their unctuous liberalism un der threat -- cower behind frayed cliches and shibboleths as they spread their gospel of reassurance. The counterfeit rhetoric of freedom and tolerance disguises a form of censorship every bit as offensive in its patronising conceit and dishonesty as the more open variety.

No excuse for unconscionable excesses
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms Jayalalithaa, no doubt, expects the people of India, in general, and Tamil Nadu, in particular, to take in their stride the excesses committed in the course of arresting the former Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, and the roughing up of Central Ministers, Mr Murasoli Maran and Mr T. R. Baalu, as a tit-for-tat for all that she underwent during the DMK regime. Obviously, the memory of her incarceration for close to two months and the repeated telecasts laying bare her o stentatious lifestyle has been rankling. She had often given vent to her desire to pay Mr Karunanidhi back in the same coin if and when she came to power. Indeed, in a sense, the raison d'etre for her wanting to come to power was itself for the purpose o f savouring the sweetness of revenge.

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