India is experiencing a job market crisis. Applicants for preferred jobs outnumber vacancies by numbers that make the process a lottery. The qualifications of these applicants far exceed the skills or knowledge required by many jobs. Attempts to influence or…
The ongoing political and economic turmoil in Sri Lanka is clearly the worst crisis the country has faced since its Independence. Yet while Sri Lanka’s current difficulties are clearly extreme, it is by no means alone among developing countries, several…
All is not quiet on India’s external economic front. The rupee seems to be on a trajectory of accelerating decline, with its value relative to the dollar (as per the Reserve Bank of India’s reference rate) falling from Rs. 76.4…
The second half of June saw the rupee’s value touching record lows below 78 to the US dollar. But this absolute low should not take away from the long term decline the rupee has been experiencing. If we consider the…
When the COVID pandemic affected every one of the world’s nations, the way forward seemed obvious, even if difficult to traverse. Given the rapid spread of the disease and its severity that overwhelmed long neglected health systems, and the cost…
The meltdown in May 2022 in the cryptocurrency world, in which the values of digital coins plunged and rendered some near-worthless, is a wake-up call. It once again shows that cryptocurrencies are nothing but a bunch of insubstantial, digital ‘bits’…
The global food crisis has now grown to such proportions that everyone is talking about it (even though world leaders are doing relatively little about it). It has become an article of faith to blame the war in Ukraine for…
Exuding optimism at a time when most indicators point to economic stress across the world, India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry put out a press release on 20 May celebrating what it describes as the “highest annual FDI (foreign direct…
In a new turn to its advocacy of a conservative fiscal stance amidst a recession, the International Monetary Fund in the April 2022 edition of its “Global Financial Stability Report” has called for reining in bank credit to governments as…
As the earth warms up to increasingly unlivable temperatures, it is clear that fossil fuel energy sources will have to be abandoned as fast as possible, even though most governments today are extraordinarily slow to move decisively on this. Clearly,…
