The “Gross Domestic Product” is a concept rooted in an epistemic position which is intrinsically incapable of recognizing the existence of a “surplus” in society. A simple example will make this clear. Suppose we have an agrarian economy in which…
India’s financial sector is in the midst of a second crisis, even as the first in the form of a humungous mass of non-performing assets on the books of commercial banks remains unresolved. This time the problem is not of…
In the past decade, talk of “currency manipulation” has become a frequent trope in discussions of international trade. Much of this stems from the US government’s aggressive position on the bilateral trade deficits the US has with several countries, and…
The report of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) conducted in 2017-18 is finally out, and it confirms what had been leaked earlier, namely a dramatic increase in the unemployment rate in the Indian economy. The unemployment rate is given…
The tariff war with China unleashed more than a year back by the Trump administration threatens to turn into full-fledged economic war. The US claims that China is engaging in unfair trade practices and adopting coercive measures against US firms,…
World trade is in deceleration mode. After having recovered smartly from 2.3 and 1.6 per cent in 2015 and 2016 to 4.6 per cent in 2017, the growth in the volume of world merchandise trade slowed to 3.0 per cent…
The central government has finally allowed the release of the report of the 2017-18 Periodic Labour Force Survey. The previous government had blocked its release before elections because the survey showed a massive increase in the unemployment rate, worst in…
The result of the recent Indian elections, which gave Narendra Modi’s Hindu Supremacist Party a second five-year term, confirms the basic argument regarding the nature of fascism. There is a fundamental difference between the 2014 elections that brought Modi to…
We often miss this aspect in our discussions, but Modi’s re-election is part of a global Right-ward shift that is taking place. Netanyahu got re-elected in Israel. Erdogan got massively re-elected in Turkey. The Conservative government came back to power…
