Last summer, while a debate over net neutrality was on in the US, in his very funny news satire show, Last Week Tonight, the comedian John Oliver used a typically risqué example to explain what a non-neutral Internet could do to small web-based entrepreneurs and startups.
Articles by Sanjoy Narayan
Download Central: The greatest jazz concert ever
I can’t get enough of the album Jazz at Massey Hall. The 1953 concert also acquired a mythical dimension because of its back story.
Updated on Nov 07, 2015 04:39 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan, New Delhi
The ease of doing business comes from infrastructure
Depending on what you’re comparing it with, India’s position in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings has moved up four or 12 places. The variance, because of a tweak in the formula, hasn’t stopped officials from exulting as this is the first time in several years that India has moved up in the annual World Bank exercise rather than sliding.
Updated on Nov 02, 2015 07:25 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Is the rise in informal jobs the real unemployment problem?
Of India’s workforce, 90% is informal, employed without social security benefits, job contracts or even the simple guarantee of getting paid fairly and on time. But look to the other half to get an idea of how many Indians have informal jobs.
Updated on Oct 26, 2015 02:39 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Download Central: Jazz, pure, past and present
Jazz guitar maestro John Scofield has the ability to ace it with his guitar work in a variety of genres, from jazz and rock to the blues.
Published on Oct 24, 2015 04:57 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan, New Delhi
Cash deals keep India’s parallel economy afloat, the loser is govt
Cash continues to be the dominant mode of transactions in India. And much of the cash that flows around in such transactions are from incomes that are not disclosed to the government in order to avoid paying taxes. The real loser is, of course, the government.
Updated on Oct 19, 2015 07:51 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Saving The Blues
If you’ve heard Blak and Blu, you know how gary Clark Jr is able to take the blues, infuse it with his raucous guitar playing and easy, super-smooth style of singing, and elevate it to a level rarely heard.
Published on Oct 10, 2015 04:52 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
How urban farming can make our cities more sustainable
Converting dumps near slums into community farms that organically produce vegetables, fruit and even crops can transform the lives of slum-dwellers.
Updated on Oct 05, 2015 08:28 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Rahul’s gaffes, leadership hiccups can work to BJP’s advantage
Every time Rahul Gandhi says something that is perceived as a gaffe or a foot-in-mouth blooper, he unerringly becomes a soft target of his political opponents and on social media sites.
Updated on Sep 27, 2015 06:46 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Keith Richards: Under the Influence is full of anecdotes
The docu has a provocative title. And if you’re familiar with the facts (and the fiction) surrounding the Rolling Stones’ 71-year-old guitarist you may think that it may be referring to substances (ingestible in different ways) that are often mentioned in association with Richards. It is not.
Updated on Sep 26, 2015 06:02 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Bihar’s poll matters even if the hype about it doesn’t
While the media hype, which will build up inevitably as the election dates approach, may not be of any special significance, what happens in Bihar’s elections will matter.
Updated on Sep 21, 2015 12:55 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Bihar's poll matters even if the hype about it doesn't
While the media hype, which will build up inevitably as the election dates approach, may not be of any special significance, what happens in Bihar’s elections will matter.
Updated on Sep 21, 2015 12:01 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
To fix its economy, India must stop obsessing over China
Instead of obsessing over how to catch up with China, India should obsess about how to fix things so that its economy gets back on track. Now that we have China out of the way, Sanjoy Narayan gives four relatively quick fixes that the government could do.
Updated on Sep 09, 2015 12:44 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
How India could reinvent its cities and boost tourism
India’s share in world tourist arrivals is a measly 0.68%. To double or treble that would call for out-of-the-box thinking. Re-inventing our urban neighbourhoods could be one such way to unleash India’s tourism potential, writes Sanjoy Narayan.
Updated on Aug 31, 2015 09:27 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
How India’s population bulge could become a ticking bomb
The government schemes to make people job-ready such as Modi’s Skill India are slow burn programmes that take much longer than it takes for the population bulge to grow bigger writes Sanjoy Narayan
Updated on Aug 24, 2015 09:10 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Gurgaon is an example of how not to urbanise India
Sanjoy Narayan talks of how Gurgaon is an example of how not to urbanise India and that with a bit more resolve, Gurgaon could have become one of India’s smartest cities.
Updated on Aug 10, 2015 09:11 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Reforms slowdown can have poll implications for BJP, Cong
The reforms slowdown will hit Mr Modi’s growth and development agenda, which was what his campaign during last year’s polls was all about, but it can rebound on the Congress as well.
Updated on Aug 07, 2015 02:22 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Apprenticeship could be real key to Skill India’s success
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a target of training 400 million Indians to become skilled workers by 2022, it was an ambitious one for it would mean turning nearly 67% of the workforce into skilled workers. Sanjoy Narayan examines the odds of this situation.
Updated on Jul 30, 2015 01:43 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
How big projects can pull our villages out of poverty
Everyone duly noted the depressing data about continuing poverty and deprivation in India’s villages: in nearly 75% of households, the highest earner has a monthly income of less than Rs 5,000; just 5% of households have someone working in a salaried government job and less than 4% have someone in a private sector job; and for more than half of village households, the main source of income comes not from farming but manual labour.
Updated on Jul 13, 2015 01:58 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Clean government a promise, power politics its price
Besides causing TV news anchors to go apoplectic daily, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s studied silence on the charges of impropriety against his cabinet colleague external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, and party colleague Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje has given rise to several theories in Delhi’s circle of political pundits about what he may eventually do with regard to the two episodes — both involving a controversial former cricket tournament organiser, Lalit Modi.
Updated on Jul 06, 2015 01:52 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Have we grown that fast? Making sense of India's new GDP numbers
At 7.3% India’s GDP growth rate during 2014-15 was the highest in the world; and, if you consider the final quarter of that period (Jan-Mar 2015), the growth rate in inflation-adjusted terms works out to 7.5%, a good half a percentage point higher than what China’s growth was during the same time. But have we really grown that fast?
Updated on Jun 29, 2015 08:31 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
PM Modi needs more diplomats to make India a power that matters
His trips - he’s been out of India for 52 days and visited 17 countries in his first year as PM - have been very visible and it is clear that he wants India to play a more decisive and leading role in the world with an emphasis on economic development. That can happen only with the help of India’s diplomats. But that’s also where there’s a problem. India has too few diplomats.
Updated on Jun 14, 2015 04:40 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Maggi controversy: It's a wake-up call for Indian consumers
When was the last time you read closely the list of ingredients on the package of food — cookies, jam, sauce or anything — that you bought before you ate it?
Updated on Jun 08, 2015 12:07 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan, New Delhi
To make India truly digital, target the poor, not rich
America’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the powerful regulator for all communication, has proposed that poor citizens of the US should have subsidised access to the internet via broadband.
Updated on May 31, 2015 11:14 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Glow of ‘net metering’: Here's the sun, it could light up your world
The potential is huge for setting up household solar power systems on rooftops, terraces and balconies in Indian cities and towns where sunlight is in abundance most of the year. And while it is true that the cost of setting up photovoltaic solar panels is not cheap, technology and innovation are constantly pushing those costs down.
Updated on May 17, 2015 12:51 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
Not all big bang reforms, but some are bang on target by Modi govt
In the din over the absence of ‘big bang reforms’, it’s easy to overlook the other reforms that the Modi government has pushed through, writes HT's editor-in-chief Sanjoy Narayan.
Updated on May 11, 2015 07:29 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
The money is coming in, but there is a sting in the e-tail
India’s e-commerce ventures are growing at an explosive pace but their underlying business models seem to be fundamentally flawed.
Updated on May 03, 2015 11:01 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
It should always be ‘my way’ on the internet highway
Last summer, while a debate over net neutrality was on in the US, in his very funny news satire show, Last Week Tonight, the comedian John Oliver used a typically risqué example to explain what a non-neutral Internet could do to small web-based entrepreneurs and startups.
Updated on Apr 19, 2015 11:15 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
If we hobble Right to Information, then we hobble India’s democracy
It took nearly 15 years for India’s Right to Information Act (RTI) to finally become a law in 2005 after the late VP Singh (who was India’s prime minister briefly) first stressed the importance of a law that would give citizens the right to seek and get information.
Updated on Apr 12, 2015 11:17 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan
PM Modi on governance, diplomacy and business
In his first interview to the Indian media since becoming Prime Minister in May last year, Modi spoke to Hindustan Times on a wide range of questions.
Updated on Apr 10, 2015 01:22 AM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan and Shishir Gupta, New Delhi
Red tape unacceptable, rules are same for Ambani and common man: PM
In his first interview to the Indian media after becoming Prime Minister, Modi told Hindustan Times that his government doesn't believe in removing red tape only for some. He said: "Red tape nahin hona chahiye matlab Mukesh Ambani ke liye red tape na ho aur ek common man ke liye red tape ho, waisa nahin chal sakta (red tape should not be there does not mean it shouldn't be there for Mukesh Ambani, but be there for a common man; that won't do)." Here is how PM Modi spends his day
Updated on Apr 10, 2015 01:34 PM IST
Hindustan Times | Sanjoy Narayan and Shishir Gupta, New Delhi