It is a truism of history that rising powers tend to be the ones valorising “free” trade and more open and integrated national economies, just as waning powers tend to turn inwards. So it is no surprise that over the…
National income is hard to estimate in India where so much activity and employment is in the informal sector. Much of GDP calculation is not purely “technocratic” but relies on judgments and assumptions. As long as our system of national…
A long-acknowledged feature of global development since the 1970s is that in many countries—advanced and poor—those at the bottom of the income pyramid have benefited little, if at all, from whatever growth has occurred. One empirical outcome of that tendency…
Public memory in India is amnesic. Still, it is difficult to forget that Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 on the plank of promoting development, aptly captured by ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’. This is not a novel idea in…
The Modi government is completing three years in office amid much fanfare and propaganda about its achievements during this period. Aiding this propaganda is the advance estimate of GDP which projects a growth-rate of 7.11 percent for 2016-17, a shade…
At the last Spring meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, Christine Lagarde, the Managing Director of the IMF, had confidently stated that the world economy was on the path of recovery, a view echoed by most official soothsayers…
While policy makers, analysts and observers paint a picture of an ongoing global economic recovery, the numbers seem to drag the optimists down. Barely days after IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, declared at the spring meetings of the World Banka…
Narendra Modi government appears to have decided to privatise public sector banks (PSBs). Preparations are underway with arguments being marshalled that “there is no alternative” to privatisation. Privatisation (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published…
Last month the Supreme Court made two important pronouncements in the space of just a few days. One was on the question of who had ownership rights over the land at the Babri Masjid site; the other was on the…
Some weeks ago when the official “quick estimates” of GDP for the third quarter of 2016-17 (October-December) had been released, putting the GDP growth in this quarter (over the corresponding quarter of 2015-16) at 7 percent, which broadly conformed to…
