Modi should bury ghosts of Vodafone, make reforms centre-stage of politics

If Modi is a true reformer, he'll bury the Vodafone tax ghost for good and go to Bihar and campaign on his latest, politically controversial farm and labour reforms

Political commentators are sometimes lampooned as intellectual gymnasts. So here we are, living up to that description, by drawing a connection between an international arbitration tribunal’s ruling favouring Vodafone in its case against India’s Rs 20,000 crore retrospective taxation claim and the coming Bihar elections, the dates for which were announced as this column was being written this Friday.

Both cases, in their own different ways, provide a challenge and an opportunity on behalf of the new economy and politics against the old. The Vodafone order has come just after its author and probably the last three decades’ biggest believer