When the pandemic first swept across the globe and destroyed economies in its wake, there were at least some expressions of international solidarity among leaders of the rich countries. External debt problems were widely recognised to be inevitable in the…
A spade must be called a spade. The biggest ally of the coronavirus today as it decimates mankind is the institution of capitalist property rights. The Economist estimates that the actual death-toll across the world from the virus so far…
India is facing an acute vaccine shortage. The impression that generally prevails is that this shortage is because while production capacity is slow to increase there has been a sudden spurt in vaccine demand since vaccination is now open for…
With India experiencing a severe second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing decentralized lockdowns, a crisis of loss of jobs and livelihoods and resulting hunger is being reported from across the country. A reluctant central government has, therefore, been forced…
Following its $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package, the Biden administration has further announced an infrastructure package of $2.3 trillion. But in contrast to the former which is to be spent within months, the latter is to be spent over an eight-year…
On March 24, 2020, Narendra Modi had announced that the country would go into a lockdown after four hours! This nation-wide lockdown was to last till the end of May, after which there were local lockdowns but not a general…
The disease ripping through the country is only one of the destructive forces affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. The dramatic increase in hunger is another. Like devastation wrought by the current surge in coronavirus infections, this…
On October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against Covid-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations. In the following months, 100 countries…
With rising non-financial corporate debt and evidence of elevated borrowing levels among non-bank financial companies, the fragility resulting from excess leverage has returned to haunt developed country financial markets. The fact that the collapse of a little-known family office firm…
The finance minister’s Budget speech 2021 revealed the government’s plans to establish an Asset Reconstruction Company to take over bad debt from the books of public sector banks for eventual disposal. That suggests that the ARC route rather than recapitalisation would in…
