Classical Mag

Saasy no more TIHAR jail in Delhi has a special wing just for her. Young women fear and revere her; their husbands seem crushed by her embrace. On television she is a sari-clad battle-axe. Books about her offer advice including: “Run, she is trying to kill you.” If you think the fearsome reputation of the Indian saas is exaggerated, glance at online discussion threads such as “I have a mother-in-law from hell”. Tales abound of humiliation, intrusion, even death threats, amid battles over who controls family life. Or watch what was formerly India’s most popular soap opera, the clunky title of which doubled as a plot summary: “Because the mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law too” (“Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi”). In this section “The longest-running, biggest grossing serial in India”, as Smriti Irani, its star, describes it, focused on how a mother-in-law managed the young women who entered her life. Mrs Irani’s fame propel...

N THE last two decades, economists have become increasingly interested in how institutions contribute to economic growth. They are particularly enthused by the view that institutions guaranteeing a “credible commitment” to liberal limits on state action—and repayment of the national debt—caused the industrial revolution to get off the ground in eighteenth-century England. This may at first appear to be an academic debate of only esoteric interest. But such views have quickly become dominant within economics. And some related conclusions—such as an emphasis on democracy and property rights as necessary pre-requisites for sustained economic growth—came to influence the so-called Washington consensus of global economic governance. But some are now questioning whether this idea of “credible commitment” has been taken too far. The phrase itself may be one of the most over-used terms in modern economics. For example, a search on EconLit , an electronic bibliography of econo...