Even the blinkered BJP government sees the need for a fiscal policy that would stimulate the economy by increasing government expenditure; but it finds itself in a bind since it does not know how to finance such larger government expenditure.…
Having recovered from their lows touched early or mid-2020, food prices are rising fast. At $574.8 a metric tonne in February 2021, the price of soyabean was 53 per cent higher than the corresponding month of 2020, when the effects…
The Covid-19 pandemic has been unusual in several ways: the disproportionate extent to which people in rich countries (particularly in Europe and North America) have been affected; the sheer scale of the policy response for containment; and the speed and…
In their saner moments, most progressives in the European Union might concede that the bloc has not acquitted itself very well as a global player during the pandemic. To be sure, it has finally displayed some good sense in looking…
The headlines suggest that the 15th Finance Commission (15th FC) has not let down the states when deciding on their constitutionally mandated share in the divisible pool of the Centre’s tax revenues over 2021-26. It has more or less stuck…
A process started four year’s back by Australian’s competition commission could offer support to a struggling global news business. The process, to curb internet firms from freeriding on news they do not generate, is expected to culminate in legislation that…
The world has been preoccupied with the Covid-19 pandemic, and this has also affected policymakers everywhere. There is much more recognition today of the terrible effects of underfunding public health over decades and how this affects the resilience of economies…
Voltaire had said “one can always kill a man with incantations, plus a little poison”. Voltaire was a rationalist which the BJP government alas is not. It believes that one can revive an economy with incantations alone, for that is…
As governments begin to vaccinate their populations against COVID-19 to win herd immunity, attention would turn to addressing the multiple crises that are the legacy of the pandemic. One such only partially recognised and half-heartedly addressed so far is the…
It defies all logic. As expected, once the implications of the Covid-19 contagion began to be absorbed, the BSE Sensex lost 37 per cent in value, falling from a level just above 41,000 on February 19, 2020, to just below…
