Reviewing the health care in the United States twenty-five years ago, the prestigious 'Daedalus' magazine coined the expression "Doing better, and feeling worse". That description certainly fits our economic scene.

The recent paralysis of public transport in AP on account of the RTC employees strike once again brought to the fore the debate between public sector and private sector. That we need competition and private initiative for improving productivity and quality of consumer goods and services is by now well-established. While there may have been a case for public investment in sectors like steel, government dabbling in business did more harm than good in the long term.

Starting this fortnight, the nation began to celebrate with great fanfare and nostalgia the birth centenary year of Loknayak JP. For a whole generation of youngsters, in whose lives the emergency period was a defining epoch, JP remains an authentic hero. Only those who lived through that period will understand the ecstacy and hope with which the fall of congress and the victory of the fledgeling Janata Party on March 21, 1977 were welcomed. Those were days of great expectation and genuine belief that a peaceful revolution had indeed begun.