Mainstream bourgeois economics which is what occupies a hegemonic position in the academic world today is often criticized for being “unreal”, for proceeding on the basis of assumptions that obviously do not correspond to reality. This criticism however, though valid,…
I propose to go back in this piece to the Indian Air Force’s strikes against the terrorist camps at Balakot in Pakistan some weeks ago. My concern here is not with the event itself but with an intellectual position that…
The Index of Industrial Production has for the first time since June 2013 contracted in absolute terms by 0.1 percent in March 2019 compared to a year ago. This comes on top of a mere 0.07 percent increase in February,…
As if all the bad news from the domestic economy were not enough, foreign trade data suggest worrisome trends on the external front as well. The latest report of monthly trade data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry indicates…
The post-second world war years had seen systematic intervention by the State to stabilize capitalist economies. In fact State intervention had played the same role in that period that incursions into colonial and semi-colonial markets had played earlier, over much…
With China having successfully convened the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing late April, discussions on the significance, impact and sustainability of this ill-defined, even if tangible, effort at economic diplomacy have revived. That effort is the Belt and…
Statistics show that the period of neo-liberal economic policy in India has witnessed a much higher rate of GDP growth compared to the earlier dirigiste period, indeed almost double the previous rate. They also show that the rate of agricultural…
On May 2, the Trump administration brought to an end the waiver the US had granted eight countries, including India, of sanctions on imports of oil from Iran. Having pulled out of the 2015 multi-country agreement with Iran to limit…
This year’s just-concluded spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were marked by a mood of gloom among the world’s leading policy makers. As recently as January 2018 the IMF had claimed that “the cyclical upswing…
