There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence. But some things are…
At the recent G20 and IMF-WB Spring meetings held virtually in the third week of April 2020, a proposal for the IMF to issue an additional 500 billion of SDRs was blocked by the United States and – astonishingly –…
The distress to which lakhs of migrant workers were suddenly exposed by the Narendra Modi government’s decision to announce a three-week-long lockdown at four hours’ notice with zero planning, has also highlighted a crucial aspect of the Indian economy. This…
This is a study conducted by Society for Social and Economic Research (SSER). SSER has requested researchers who have been conducting field-based studies of villages and the rural economy to reach out to informants in their study areas over telephone…
The current pandemic has brought to the fore, and with exceptional clarity, the fundamental contradiction underlying contemporary globalization, namely, the contradiction between the interests of finance and those of the people. Indeed this contradiction, which characterizes the era of globalization…
The tragic irony could not have been more complete. The country is under lockdown, but thousands of migrant workers are thronging bus stands or marching on the roads, making a mockery of it; the aim of the lockdown is to…
The defining images of the coronavirus crisis in India are the images of migrants, children in tow, walking hundreds of kilometers to return home - only to be denied entrance. These images are driving home the extent of the government’s…
One of the many symptoms of the economic shock resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic is a sharp depreciation of the Indian rupee vis-à-vis the dollar. The value of the rupee fell from 71.3 to the dollar on February 12 to…
This lecture will try to essentially look at the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian economy — though, as we all understand, we are at a point where we don’t know anything about a lot of things, as the future…
It is said that in a crisis everybody becomes a socialist; free markets take a back seat, to the benefit of the working people. During the second world war for instance, when universal rationing was introduced in Britain, the average…
