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…
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…
In an attempt to persuade listeners into believing that Budget 2021 will complete the conquest of disease and unleash an era of post-Covid expansion, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman placed special emphasis in her budget speech on two sets of initiatives.…
January proved to be an unusual month in the US equity market. The shares of GameStop, a brick-and-mortar retailer of gaming consoles and video games, had in the course of that month risen by close to 2000 per cent. The…
Buised by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are looking for renewal. So, even granting that an annual budget is not a corrective for all ills, evidence of a change in course was expected in…
Budget presentations have turned tiresome for some years now, and for many reasons. Their length, which tends to be way beyond that warranted by substance. The tendency to drone on about off-budget policy initiatives in Part A, most of which…
India’s Constitution puts the bulk of responsibility for the basic goods and services to be provided to citizens on to state governments. That is also why it mandated that independent Finance Commissions be appointed every five years to determine the…
