The summit of the leaders of G20 meetings that met in Hamburg early July was nothing short of a fiasco. Outside the meeting, the massive protest demonstration and the unwarranted aggression of a huge police force made clear that these…
The big news late in June 2017 was that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in the UK had charged four former senior executives of Barclays bank, including its former chief executive, John Varley, with fraud committed almost a decade earlier,…
The policy shifts of the reform era have not been in favor of agriculture. Trade liberalisation, deregulation and a greater role for market forces have not benefited the farmer, who is trapped in a persisting crisis. It is time for…
A long-acknowledged feature of global development since the 1970s is that in many countries—advanced and poor—those at the bottom of the income pyramid have benefited little, if at all, from whatever growth has occurred. One empirical outcome of that tendency…
While policy makers, analysts and observers paint a picture of an ongoing global economic recovery, the numbers seem to drag the optimists down. Barely days after IMF Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, declared at the spring meetings of the World Banka…
Narendra Modi government appears to have decided to privatise public sector banks (PSBs). Preparations are underway with arguments being marshalled that “there is no alternative” to privatisation. Privatisation (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published…
No discussion of South Korea’s dramatic transition from a poor underdeveloped country to a developed country member of the OECD club of rich nations can ignore the role of the chaebols—its ‘clans of wealth’. Consisting of a large number of…
The crisis created by non-performing assets (NPAs) on the balance sheets of commercial banks, especially public sector (PSBs), does not go away. It only intensifies. An environment that triggered large inflows of foreign capital and a surge in credit after…
The state of Jharkhand has reportedly stopped payments to the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) for the 700 MW of power the later supplies it every day. The evident reason is that it has not been able to cover payments for…
China, now one of the world’s two largest nations measured by gross domestic product (GDP), is displaying a strange malady. A sudden and large outflow of capital from the country is resulting in a sharp fall in its reserves. Going…
