Finance capital is always opposed to the use of fiscal measures for stimulating an economy. This is because any such fiscal stimulation undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism, and especially of that segment of it which constitutes the world of…
The name of Amitava Bose who passed away in Kolkata on January 13 may not be known to many people outside of a small circle of scholars, students, and friends, but he was in formal terms the finest macro-economist in…
India’s anti-colonial struggle was not just about getting independence from foreign rule. In fact, this struggle would not even have succeeded if it had been only about that. It was simultaneously, and indeed had to be, an effort to forge…
The term “infrastructure” covers all sorts of things, from ports to roads to canals to bridges to building railway lines. Because it covers such a range of things, many of which appear to be useful, most people look upon “infrastructure”…
All across the world, from the United States to Britain to Europe to China, a huge resistance is building up against globalization. True, this resistance is not self-consciously aimed against globalization per se; in different countries it focuses on different…
The World Bank and the IMF have started a new trend of late, of taking “progressive” positions in their publications even while insisting on the same old “conditionalities” in policy negotiations with particular countries. In accordance with this new trend…
After a recent meeting of the Empowered Committee of Finance Ministers, Arun Jaitley announced that barring Tamilnadu all other state governments had favoured the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). What he meant by that remark was not…
An absurd debate has been going on for some time in India. On the one side are those who blame Raghuram Rajan, the governor of the Reserve Bank who has just decided not to seek an extension of his term,…
The corporate-communal alliance that came to power after the 2014 elections needs careful management by its promoters, because within each of the partners of the alliance there are elements that are not altogether comfortable with the other. Within the Hindutva…
Globalization was advertised as being beneficial for all, as constituting a bold step towards universal economic betterment. This was clearly wrong; and it was not just Left economists, but even “mainstream” economists like Paul Samuelson who had said so at…
