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Destroying Forests for Profits 2nd October, 2023 |Prabhat PatnaikThe Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits. It is amending the Forest Conservation Act to remove those forest patches that are not deemed as such ...
On the Current Food Price Inflation in India 25th September, 2023 |Prabhat PatnaikThe current upsurge in prices in India is led by food prices. In July 2023 while retail inflation was 7.44 per cent (over July of the previous year), food price inflation, which covers all food items including foodgrains, vegetables, milk products and such like, was 11.5 per cent. Food price inflation came down a little ...
The Silences of the Delhi Declaration 18th September, 2023 |Prabhat PatnaikThe G-20 meeting in Delhi was occurring in the midst of an acute economic crisis of the world economy. The advanced capitalist economies are expected by the IMF to witness a growth slowdown from 2.7 per cent in 2022 to 1.3 per cent in 2023; according to an alternative estimate by the IMF their growth ...

India’s BoP Story 3rd October, 2023 |C. P. ChandrasekharUnlike many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the Indian economy is not characterised by external debt stress or distress that could lead to default. It does record almost consistent current account deficits on the balance of payments, but these are not at unsustainable levels. They can be easily financed with ‘normal’ net capital inflows. Given ...
The Injustice Contained in Global Fiscal Indicators 21st September, 2023 |C. P. ChandrasekharThe sovereign debt crises confronting many low and middle income countries is now common knowledge and is frequently referred to by global policy makers—even though remarkably little is being done by the international powers-that-be to resolve these crises. The general presumption is that many of these countries experienced dramatically increased sovereign (external) debt stress because ...
The Anatomy of Inflation 5th September, 2023 |C. P. ChandrasekharAs news broke that the monsoon month August was the driest since 1901, when records began to be kept, fears of inflation gathered strength. At 161.7 mm across the country, rainfall that month was well below the previous record low of 191.2 mm recorded in 1905. This August’s 36 per cent deficiency in rainfall relative ...

Young Scholars Conference Political Economy of Contemporary South Asia 14th June, 2023 |Macroscan TeamOur key theme is the political economy of contemporary South Asia. At the core of these transformations are the fraught and so-called “truncated transition,” where South Asian societies are not making the transition from farm to factory, but the rise of informal economies, industrial clusters, in-between agrarian-urban and peri-urban spaces force us to rethink familiar ...
Remembering Abhijit Sen 11th September, 2022 |Macroscan Team
When Governments Fail: A pandemic and its aftermath 25th August, 2021 |Vikas Rawal August 2021 6.14 x 9.21 inches (xx+292) 312 pages Hardback ISBN: 978-81-947175-4-6 Rs 900 The Covid-19 pandemic has generated human suffering and economic devastation across the world – but these reflect not just the effects of the disease but the policy failures of governments. The pandemic has highlighted and accentuated the extent of inequalities between and within countries. These have been ...

Remembering Abhijit Sen 11th September, 2022 |Macroscan Team
Abhijit Sen carved out a Unique Space of his Own 3rd September, 2022 |Poornima Varma Abhijit Sen, eminent economist, passed away on August 29 at the age of 71. He retired as Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, in 2015. During his association with the university, which spanned a period of more than three decades, Prof. Sen made remarkable contributions to the rural and ...
For Abhijit Sen, Facts and Data were Religion and Ideology 1st September, 2022 |Himanshu My last meeting with Professor Abhijit Sen was just a week ago, before his untimely death due to a heart attack on August 29. We were trying to make sense of trends in the Indian economy, particularly in poverty, inequality and employment. We parted with the promise to meet soon to continue our discussion with more data ...

Panel Discussion: Three Decades of Neo-liberal Reforms in India: Critique and resistance 5th September, 2021 |Macroscan Team Date: Sep 4, 2021 Time: 06:30 PM IST Speakers: Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University C. P. Chandrasekhar, Professor of Economics (retired), Jawaharlal Nehru University Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Moderated by Prof. Surajit Mazumdar, Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Do Formalisation Policies help Women Workers? 7th April, 2021 |Macroscan TeamWebinar sponsored by PERI and IDEAs Panel discussion on the new book “Informal Women Workers in the Global South” with Jayati Ghosh, Martha Chen, Diane Elson, Pasuk Phongpaichit, Dzodzi Tsikata, Hameda Deedat, and C. P. Chandrasekhar
Agrarian Change Seminar: ‘Protests against the New Farm Laws in India’ 31st January, 2021 |Vikas Rawal In the second half of 2020, while the country was struggling with COVID-19 pandemic and impacts of a crippling 10-week national lockdown, the Indian government enacted three national laws related to agriculture. These laws created a new national framework for contract farming, deregulated agricultural marketing to open the doors for greater corporate control, and reduced ...

Budget 2023-24: Neither growth nor welfare friendly 8th February, 2023 |C. P. ChandrasekharIf we ignore the hype that accompanies and follows the presentation of the Centre’s annual budget, there are principally two strands in it that have attracted attention. The first is the claim of the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman that in a growth-accelerating intervention, the step-up in capital or investment expenditure during the second term of ...
Budget 2023-24: Ignoring the Economy’s Basic Problem 6th February, 2023 |Prabhat PatnaikThe most outstanding feature of the Indian economy today is the sluggish increase in real consumption expenditure. Between 2019-20 and 2022-23 for instance the per capita real consumption expenditure has grown by less than 5 per cent which is less than the rate of growth of the gross domestic product. Even the meagre recovery from ...
Tightening the Screws 3rd February, 2023 |Jayati GhoshWe all know that the Narendra Modi government has strong centralising tendencies — not just between the Centre and the state governments but even within Central ministries, with the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministry of home affairs being the loci of real power. We also know that with the closure of the Planning Commission ...