Did Manmohan Singh get the idea of 90s' reforms from a Pakistani economist?

India borrowed Pakistan's economic and reforms plans and implemented them successfully while "we squandered the opportunity largely because of political instability", Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has said.

"During the 90s the then Indian Finance Minister Manmohan Singh borrowed economic reforms strategies from his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz and successfully implemented them in India," said Iqbal, who also holds the portfolio of Interior Minister.

He was speaking at the inauguration of Pakistan National Centre for Cyber Security in Islamabad, the Express Tribune reported on Tuesday.

Iqbal claimed that Bangladesh also successfully used the same strategies but Pakistan could not put its own plans to use as the decade was lost to political instability, the report said.

Euro zone finance ministers to discuss banking union, common budget

Euro zone finance ministers will discuss next week completion of the banking union, ideas for setting up a common budget and ways to simplify the bloc's fiscal rules, in preparation for a December summit on reforming the currency area.

No conclusions are likely to be reached at the Eurogroup meeting on Monday, however, as there are widely differing views among the 19 countries that share the euro on most aspects of reform.

"It will be more laying out the table before cooking starts," one senior euro zone official said.

The December 15 euro zone summit will start six months of deliberations on deeper integration, with a further summit in June 2018 taking decisions on how the single currency area will look in future.

Among the possible changes are ideas for a special pool of money for euro zone countries that would be managed by a finance minister for the whole of the euro zone and who would answer to a euro zone caucus in the European Parliament.

Other proposals include turning the euro zone bailout fund into a European Monetary Fund and creating a sovereign insolvency mechanism that would put market pressure on governments to conduct prudent fiscal policies.

Some euro zone officials believe the involvement of markets is necessary because EU fiscal rules — the Stability and Growth Pact — have become so complex and prone to political interpretation that they are no longer effective.

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120 homes destroyed: London fire tragedy reveals ugly flaws of regeneration

I grew up in social housing. It provided a stable and secure (albeit overcrowded and cold) home for my family, for life. As fire tore through Grenfell Tower, just 500 metres from where I was staying in London, I witnessed the complete and terrible destruction of 120 homes just like the one I grew up in. In the morning, I passed the police cordon and saw dozens of fire fighters standing in complete, abject shock. At least 12 lives were lost, and many more are still feared for.

Yet as the ashes settle, it is clear that the threat of ruin extends well beyond Grenfell Tower. Indeed, the policies which I argue have contributed to this disaster have been rolled out across social housing projects both in the UK, and across Europe. Earlier this year, not far from Grenfell, local residents in Westminster voted against any form of refit to their notoriously poorly-maintained Brunel Estate. And many residents across London fear the prospect of “urban regeneration”, seeing it as a type of social cleansing, shorthand for a modern form of slum clearance.

Residents worry that any improvements will set them on a slippery slope to gentrification and eventual displacement. Over the years, I have watched with dismay as successive governments – both Labour and Conservative – have depleted the available housing stock through schemes such as right-to-buy, while also running down the standard of the remaining housing stock with constant budget cuts. Faced with this gradual depletion and dilapidation, many family homes languish in a state of disrepair, while tenants’ fears that they could lose their homes go unassuaged.

This is not just a British problem. During my academic research in France I have seen deplorable incidences of housing stock that are not fit for human habitation, and where repairs are routinely neglected. Where regeneration does take place, I fear it is often done with little consultation and even less accountability.

A warning

As Londoners get to grips with the tragic losses at Grenfell Tower, reports have emerged about a recent refit that the tower underwent. Only last year, the site was given a £8.7m refit, during which a new central heating system was installed, more homes fitted in the lower levels and new cladding added to the outside of the building, among other things.
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