Aditya Chakrabortty



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Email: [mailto:aditya.chakrabortty@guardian.co.uk aditya.chakrabortty@guardian.co.uk]

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Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/adityachakrabortty

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Education: St Hugh's college, Oxford: Modern History

Career: BBC: five years as economics producer (working with economics editor Evan Davis); senior producer on the Ten o'clock News, Newsnight

Current position/role: Leader writer and columnist


 * also writes/written for: The Telegraph, Financial Times, FT Magazine and New Statesman

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Awards/Honours: Series of reports from China for the BBC won a Harold Wincott award in 2006

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Speaking/Appearances: 18th June 2013: Meet Polly Toynbee and Aditya Chakrabortty for a coffee on Tuesday. If you'd like to talk to our columnists face to face, here's a chance to do so at our new coffee shop in east London.

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 * Behind the restaurant boom: the urban delusion consuming our cities - Eating out is fine, for diners and investors, but the gastronomy craze won’t produce a healthy economy - 23rd December 2014
 * Business giants walk off with our billions. No more something for nothing - The state has the powers to make business serve us better. A north London borough is leading the way - 10th December 2014
 * I'm Bengali and I'm black – in the same way that my parents were - Although we fixate on our differences, ethnic minorities are bound together by the injustices and frustrations of racism - 31st October 2014
 * Today's Britain: where the poor are forced to steal or beg from food banks - MPs who fiddled thousands got off lightly, yet they have created a system where the hungry go to jail - 28th October 2014
 * If you’re disabled, it’s not just Lord Freud who holds you in contempt - The lives of Britain’s most vulnerable people have been hit far harder than any other group by austerity cuts and vilification - 21st October 2014
 * At yacht parties in Cannes, councils have been selling our homes from under us - Property developers wining and dining town hall executives - it's a jaunt so lavish as to be almost comic - 14th October 2014
 * Cut benefits? Yes, let's start with our £85bn corporate welfare handout - Billions of pounds of British public money has gone to business, with Disney getting £170m. They really are taking the Mickey - 7th October 2014
 * Awkward questions for Tesco should be answered by its accountants too - Auditors are vital to the financial markets. But when they miss a catastrophe in the offing, they’re not doing their job - 30th September 2014
 * For real politics, don’t look to parliament but to an empty London housing estate - A group of 29 homeless single mothers, about to be shunted 200 miles away, have taken radical action - 23rd September 2014
 * A go-alone Scottish economy is viable – but would it be any better? - Scots may dream of a Swedish-style state but, lacking concrete plans, Ireland is the likelier model - 16th September 2014
 * Poverty pay isn't inevitable. Look to the cleaners of New York - In the US, the workers are organised. In Britain, even within the same hotel chain, earnings are lower and job insecurity higher - 8th September 2014
 * And so the Great British Railway Rake-Off rolls on - Network Rail’s £34bn debt has helped private companies to make huge profits. And now we’re ordered to pick up the bill - 2nd September 2014
 * The nightmare of renting started in Westminster - The human kennels we hear about didn't spring up by accident. This broken market is the result of 30 years of bad housing policy - 26th August 2014
 * Supine Labour lets the Tories daub lipstick on this pig - Austerity was a disaster. But in the absence of proper counter-arguments, Osborne is able claim it was an economic triumph - 29th July 2014
 * Student loans: not even Cameron could privatise the unprivatisable - The student loan sale ‘plan’ was never going to work – now all we’re left with is a vision of chaos at the top of government - 23rd July 2014
 * What Labour's free owl pledge reveals about the state of political debate - None of the main political parties has said which public services they would hack. Westminster now resembles a version of Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch - 23rd June 2014
 * Thames Water: the drip, drip, drip of discontent - Remember Sid? He was the one who promised us a brave new world of privatisation. Tell that to Thames Water customers - 16th June
 * If the right's ideas on inequality were any flimsier they could be worn by Rihanna - After Piketty, the right can no longer ignore inequality – but can they come up with a coherent plan to address it? - 9th June 2014
 * Britain's economy is dangerously imbalanced – just look at the London property bubble - The only way to correct the situation is to invest north of Watford - 2nd June 2014
 * Britain still feasts on credit – the next crunch will hit in 2016 - Interest rates won't stay low for much longer. When the cheap loans end the result will be red-letter bills and repossessions - 30th May 2014
 * Narendra Modi: is a hi-tech populist the best India can hope for? - Talk of a 'revolutionary moment' is usually hyperbole, but not here: NaMo ticks none of the values that are laid out in his country's constitution - 20th May 2014
 * How Britain's economy got dumber: Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca - The true significance of the proposed takeover is how few options Britain has now that our manufacturing and research capacity has withered away - 13th May 2014
 * University economics teaching isn't an education: it's a £9,000 lobotomy - Economics took a battering after the financial crisis, but faculties are refusing to teach alternative views. It's as if there's only one way to run an economy - 9th May 2014
 * Why school trips to New York mean an educational arms race for parents - Schools want to prove they are more than 'bog-standard comprehensives'. Parents want the best for their kids. But is it all just a waste of money? - 15th April 2014
 * Narendra Modi, a man with a massacre on his hands, is not the reasonable choice for India - It looks likely that Modi will be India's next prime minister. But his apologists can't dismiss the facts about his rule as chief minister of Gujarat - 8th April 2014
 * Meet the new breed of fat cat: the university vice-chancellor - Never mind the bankers – university bosses are lining their pockets like never before - 4th March 2014
 * Fashion likes to dress itself up as something more, but it is one of the most hyper-capitalist businesses - Haute couture is one of the very few businesses allowed to present itself as not being wholly about commerce, but the facts say otherwise - 18th February 2014
 * What's that sucking sound? It's all the public money and private wealth being swallowed up by London - This is no longer north v south: it's the rest of the country versus a small elite in London - 11th February 2014
 * How to tackle the hoarding of houses in 'Billionaires Row' - Britain is in the middle of a housing crisis, with thousands of people sleeping rough. We should use the tax system to penalise under-occupation - 4th February 2014
 * Dude, where's my North Sea oil money? - For a few years, the UK enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime windfall – only, unlike the Norwegians, we've got almost nothing to show for it - 14th January 2014
 * Betting-shop machines sucking cash out of communities … this is what predatory capitalism looks like - While giving councils greater powers to block new gambling shops, it would be better to cut the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals - 7th January 2014
 * For a real-life Hunger Games, look no further than your local bank - The dystopian fantasy starring Jennifer Lawrence is a lot like real life – if you're a high-street bank employee - 17th December 2013
 * Let's admit it: Britain is now a developing country - We have iPads and broadband – but also oversubscribed foodbanks. Our economy is no longer zooming along unchallenged in the fast lane, but a clapped-out motor - 10th December 2013
 * Autumn statement: no big winners, but Ed Balls is the clearest loser - A Westminster discussion worth hearing would have acknowledged that Britain is recovering – then asked why that recovery is serving so few people - 6th December 2013
 * The University of London cleaners fighting for their rights - Thanks to outsourcing, economic apartheid is alive and well and flourishing in our universities - 26th November 2013
 * Police are cracking down on students – but what threat to law and order is an over-articulate history graduate? - For most of my life student politics has been little more than a joke. Suddenly it's become both serious and admirable - 19th November 2013
 * Twitter IPO: why the wrong people ended up with the money - If you think the social media company's stockmarket flotation is an advert for starting your own hi-tech company, just look at what happened to the founders - 12th November 2013
 * Rail privatisation: legalised larceny - Train operators invest little cash but take massive profits. This wasn't what the Tories promised - 5th November 2013
 * Mainstream economics is in denial: the world has changed - Despite the crash, the high priests of economics refuse to look at the big picture – and continue to prop up the world's elites - 29th October 2013
 * Loneliness is an inevitable result of Britain's economic model - The health secretary wants adults to look after their elderly parents to combat loneliness, as Asian people do. But Jeremy Hunt is wrong on who loneliness affects, wrong on what causes it, and wrong on what's happening in Asia - 22nd October 2013
 * Forced student labour is central to the Chinese economic miracle - China has an army of student labour making Apple products, PlayStation consoles and other gadgets for the west. The teenagers' stories make upsetting reading
 * Press freedom: is that the right to make up stories about asylum seekers? - The Daily Mail's attacks on Ed Miliband are just the thin of the wedge, usually the tabloids target groups that can't fight back so easily - 8th October 2013
 * The incredible shrinking Tory party - The attendance figures for the Conservative party conference tell a tale of how David Cameron lost his core membership and let the bankers in - 1st October 2013
 * Why this year's freshers are just part of a failed experiment - Higher education is pumping out people with degrees into a jobs market that doesn't need them. It's blighting lives – and undermining the university system itself - 24th September 2013
 * Tony Abbott's election victory and Labor's braindead politics - Australia's economy is an enviable state, yet Abbott pummelled the Labor party to its heaviest defeat in a century. How? - 9th September 2013
 * BT's great broadband scam - The former public utility is gambling with your money, but doesn't think you should know where it's going - 13th August 2013
 * The woman who nearly died making your iPad - Tian Yu worked more than 12 hours a day, six days a week. She had to skip meals to do overtime. Then she threw herself from a fourth-floor window - 6th August 2013
 * Prince George of Newham – what would his life chances be? - Even fine minds are accepting the modern myth that the life chances of Britons today are roughly equal. So imagine if baby George Alexander Louis were to be brought up not in Kensington, but in the East End of London … - 30th July 2013
 * Satyajit Ray's artifice and honesty set him apart from other film directors - He was a giant in India, but he also dominated world cinema – which is why it's fitting for the BFI to pay tribute to him - 23rd July 2013
 * George Osborne: this economic recovery SUCs - S is for sluggish, U for unemployment and C for credit. Where are the wage rises, exports and business investment? - 16th July 2013
 * Looking for a party funding scandal? Try David Cameron's Conservatives - We know how much Unite gives Labour, but finding out who writes the cheques for Conservative Central Office is more difficult - 9th July 2013
 * Mark Carney is hailed as a saviour – but what do we really know about him? - The new Bank of England governor's CV contains details that should give one pause – such as that decade spent in the Goldman Sachs shark pool - 2nd July
 * Don't be fooled by Richard Branson's defence of Virgin trains - Richard Branson didn't like my column about his rail company – but he can't deny that taxpayers are piling up debts to subsidise his profits - 25th June 2013
 * Borisstan: the independent city state and docking station for global wealth formerly known as London - What would the British capital look like in the future if it broke away from the rest of the country? - 18th June 2013
 * The truth about Richard Branson's Virgin Rail profits - I once called Richard Branson a carpetbagger. A new report reveals that I was correct to say he built his business empire with millions from the taxpayers – only it's worse than I thought - 11th June 2013
 * Talk of recovery in Greece is premature – and all about justifying austerity - Bank bosses and politicians are trying to convince the world that Greece is on the mend – but this boosterism is all about justifying the shock therapy imposed on the eurozone - 4th June 2013
 * Swedish riots: if instability can happen here, what might unfold elsewhere? - a stark rise in inequality has brought about unprecedented rioting in Stockholm. The omens for Britain are worrying - 28th May 2013
 * The Great Gatsby's world is every bit as unequal as Britain under the coalition - The wealthy in America and Britain no longer resemble the prewar elite, but appearances cannot mask how cut off they are from the rest of us - 21st May 2013
 * The elite boast of little sleep, but it's those at the bottom who really suffer - Sleep proves how inequality touches even our most intimate lives – just ask those who toil for low pay with inadequate rest - 6th May 2013
 * What links the MMR scare and austerity? - Both sagas have their roots in dodgy academic papers, the agenda-pushing press and politicians – and willing believers - 30th April 2013
 * Young appmakers can't count on a job for life - Brits force-fed the language of enterprise and no-jobs-for-life are now putting it into practice and getting precisely nowhere - 23rd April 2013
 * Underemployment can be as corrosive as unemployment – and it's on the rise - Lots of people are wondering why the employment figures aren't worse, since we're in such a slump. Well, if you measure them properly, they are - 16th April 2013
 * The Lloyds workers are paying for their bosses' catastrophe - Average Lloyds employees face hardship and redundancy. Meanwhile, those that led them into this mess are thriving - 9th April 2013
 * David Miliband and the debasement of British politics - Our MPs are increasingly remote from the voters – Westminster has become the equivalent of a gap year for middle-aged overachievers - 2nd April 2013
 * George Osborne is using Britons as economic cannon fodder - This is a dangerous time to push the property market. The chancellor won't invest – yet he's happy for us to - 26th March 2013
 * The Cyprus eurozone bailout conditions are bank robbery pure and simple - This is yet another euro bailout that punishes ordinary people to prop up a bust financial system. How long can the euro last now? - 19th March 2013
 * A short history of austerity: it almost never works - You have to be one of Vince Cable's 'austerity jihadists' to believe you can cut your way out of a slump - 12th March 2013
 * Britain's shrinking economy: why the level of debate is farcical - Armando Iannucci's 'paper houses' comedy sketch offers a great insight into Britain's economic crisis - 29th January 2013
 * An action-packed thriller is about to unfold in Davos, Switzerland - In secret meetings in tiny rooms, the rich plot to get even richer - 22nd January 2013
 * To understand the deepening mess we are in now, it's worth looking to the words of a Polish economist in 1944 - This assault on an entire social contract is what Michał Kalecki warned about - 15th January 2013
 * The Welfare State, 1942-2013, obituary - After decades of public illness, Beveridge's most famous offspring has died - 8th january 2013
 * There's more to this new Arthur Scargill chic than mere fashion nostalgia - The high-street retailer's new collection of clothes dedicated to the former miners' leader reminds us of times when workers were taken more seriously - 11th December 2012
 * George Osborne's growth plan relies on us accruing even more debt - For all their promises of a new economic model, Britain's politicians on both sides remain stuck on the old debt-fuelled system - 4th December 2012
 * Big business has corrupted economics - You know the country is in a financial mess when even establishment figures such as Rachel Lomax are calling for revolutionary thinking - 27th November 2012
 * Why David Cameron is doing business with India's 'modern-day Nero' - Britain has boycotted Narendra Modi for years – but now the government has brought him in from the cold - 20th November 2012
 * America on the edge of a 'fiscal cliff'? No, it's the right peddling scare stories - The economic abyss is a distortion peddled by the US right and Obama's Democrats – just like Britain's left – need to counter the myth - 13th November 2012
 * America has supersized inequality. Political gridlock was bound to follow - US voters are split along an ever-widening faultline of wealth and poverty, so it's no wonder there's little hope of moderation in politics - 6th November 2012
 * The graph that shows how far David Cameron wants to shrink the state - If the Tories get their way, within five years the UK will have a smaller public sector than any major developed nation - 16th October 2012
 * From New Delhi to Westminster, governments are cavalier about the poor - But the truth is that they should be listening to them instead - 9th October 2012
 * Innovation – who would dare oppose it? - Growth-hungry Britain prizes innovation. But how do colossal TVs or self-sorting smart socks boost our standard of living? - 2nd October 2012
 * Justice and security bill: this is a dangerous, spurious law - Liberal Democrats at their conference must vote to reject the shameful, self-serving, spook-authored bill - 24th September 2012
 * Occupy is one year old. The critics are wrong to say there's little to celebrate - Occupy might not have the high-profile presence it did a year ago, but it would be wrong to dismiss its continuing relevance - 18th September 2012
 * The Thick of It? What George Osborne is doing is beyond satire - When I think of what the Treasury has been up to, the daily unravelling at DoSAC looks like an exercise in political mastery - 11th September 2012
 * Meet Wealth-Creator™ – a new superhero for these recessionary times – here to save us from sticky red tape - Except that these are not wealth creators at all. They're wealth extractors – shaking down their businesses or investments for money, without even risking much of their own cash - 4th September 2012
 * Why Osborne should pay heed to our Olympics triumph - If we ran Olympic sport in the same way we ran the economy, our athletes would be running races in their socks - 21st August 2012
 * What the Olympics opening ceremony tells us about our economy - You may have thought it was just a brilliant and bonkers portrait of Britain's history - but was it actually about a country coming to terms with its own decline? - 31st July 2012
 * Ten years of austerity? Only the British would meet that with barely a murmur - We appear to accept a decade of national privation, but there's no reason this unprecedented schedule of pain should be taken as inevitable - 24th July 2012
 * Ed Miliband is a great middle-class activist. But a prime minister? - As Labour leader, he makes a very fine boss of an NGO - 17th July 2012
 * The wrecking of Barclays is organised looting by those at the very top - The way Barclays has been debased to enrich a few hundred of its elite employees is also the story of Britain in recent decades - 10th July 2012
 * Barclays Libor scandal: how can we change banking culture? - They've taken hundreds of billions of taxpayers' money in bailouts – and still they can't resist ripping us off. What – if anything – can be done about it? - 3rd July 2012
 * The Shard is the perfect metaphor for modern London - Expensive, off-limits and owned by foreign investors – the Shard extends the ways in which London is becoming more unequal - 26th June 2012
 * Can Mervyn King save the British economy? - The Bank of England governor is probably the man most responsible for getting Britain out of recession. So can he do it? - 19th June 2012
 * The euro crisis is happening in Britain too - Areas of Britain are suffering just like Spain – to get an idea, visit Kirkby in Merseyside - 12th June 2012
 * Give these overpaid CEOs asbos (that's Antisocial Business Orders) - They give their advice on how to run the country, yet, with their huge pay packages and 'efficient' tax affairs, they're increasingly remote from the rest of us - 29th May 2012
 * The austerity deniers want to get us out of this crisis by hacking at the poor and vulnerable - The everything-must-go brigade discuss workers' rights with all the suspicion of an 11-year-old ordering frogs' legs - 22nd May 2012
 * Is the single currency worth saving at all? - Eurozone officials must have guessed at the upheaval and social unrest caused by their austerity measures – and imposed them anyway - 15th May 2012
 * Angry academics can't answer my criticism that there's too little analysis of our current crisis - Discussion of the economic crisis must be made democratic – and economists have a role to play in that - 8th May 2012
 * No, Boris – spending more on London won't fix the country's economic woes - London gets the lion's share of taxpayer money for health, housing and transport. Now Boris wants to blow more on the capital. But his argument is flatly wrong - 1st May 2012
 * Apple: why doesn't it employ more US workers? - The electronics giant assembles its gadgets in China. But, according to new research, if it moved its production home, it would still be hugely profitable and create thousands of jobs - 24th April 2012
 * Economics has failed us: but where are the fresh voices? - Mainstream economic models have been discredited. But why aren't political scientists and sociologists offering an alternative view? - 17th April 2012
 * Why are English and American novels today so gutless? - The great Bengali thinker Rabindranath Tagore, born 150 years ago, was a passionate political author. Sadly, literary writers today seem to have no time for politics - 10th April 2012
 * Why do bankers get to decide who pays for the mess Europe is in? - There were summits about how much misery would be imposed on the Greeks – and no trade unions got a say - 3rd April 2012
 * How we fell out of love with Keynes - The same intellectual retreat can be seen all over the western world and it shows that noble intentions and half-decent ideas don't get you very far - 27th March 2012
 * Privatising our roads will be a terrible deal – just as it was for the telecoms and water industries - Report after report shows that the myth of greater private-sector efficiency in doing public works is just that: a myth - 20th March 2012
 * David Cameron's cuts make the UK more lopsided - Since they moved into Downing Street, David Cameron and George Osborne have managed to hack the public sector to its smallest since the summer of 2003 - 15th March 2012
 * Gordon Brown did not save the world but he saved the UK - When the moment of maximum danger came, Brown had the right diagnosis and did largely the right things - 7th February 2012
 * Who came up with the model for excessive pay? No, it wasn't the bankers – it was academics - All the focus has been on bankers' bonuses, yet no one has looked at the economists who argued for rewarding bosses by giving them a bigger financial stake in their companies - 31st January 2012
 * The payout to the boss of RBS is a disastrous deal for the taxpayer - Ministers could act over Stephen Hester, the most lavishly rewarded public servant of all – but will they? - 24th January 2012
 * Time to take control of the credit rating agencies - Credit rating agencies keep getting it wrong but still make billions. Why don't politicians stand up to them? - 17th January 2012
 * It's time to cancel unpayable old debts - Economic history is full of examples of successful debt default – so let's make 2012 a default jubilee for have-nots - 10th January 2012
 * The euro crisis deepens - Every week brought more dire forecasts in the battle to save Europe's economic club. But 2012 will be its worst year yet - 27th December 2011
 * How British workers are losing the power to think - As consumers, Britons are more powerful than ever before – but at work we are losing our autonomy - 20th December 2011
 * I love Come Dine With Me's cheap sugar highs - The simple pleasures of Come Dine With Me may leave you feeling a bit sick, but they taste all right going down - 15th December 2011
 * Britain is ruled by the banks, for the banks - Is David Cameron's kid-glove treatment of the City remotely justified, when it neither pays its way nor lends effectively? - 13 December 2011
 * How will Britain cope with its lost decade? Take a look at Japan - The Japanese have been traumatised by their economic stagnation – but this country is in for a much more turbulent time - 6th December 2011
 * When people are paid by results their attitudes change. Just look at the England rugby team debacle - Twickenham shows what would happen if market forces were brought in to the NHS - 29th November 2011
 * It's nonsense to suggest Virgin's success has depended on state help - Far from being lazy, we have built our businesses on hard work in very tough markets - 23rd November 2011 (by Richard Branson, in response)
 * Is Richard Branson all he's cracked up to be? - The billionaire Virgin boss is no radical, he's no entrepreneur, he's just a plain old-fashioned carpetbagger - 21st November 2011
 * Why doesn't Britain make things any more? - In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it? - 16th November 2011
 * Letting technocrats run Europe is bad politics and bad economics - It's a mistake to put unelected officials in charge of Italy and Greece - 14th November 2011
 * How best to tackle corruption? - It tends to be a cultural problem – so perhaps cultural solutions, rather than laws, are the best way to stamp it out - 7th November 2011



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