Facebook has launched a process that would lead to the creation of a new cryptocurrency, “Libra”, in the first half of 2020. Named after a unit of weight used in ancient Rome, Facebook hopes Libra would become the dominant measure…
The “Gross Domestic Product” is a concept rooted in an epistemic position which is intrinsically incapable of recognizing the existence of a “surplus” in society. A simple example will make this clear. Suppose we have an agrarian economy in which…
Mainstream bourgeois economics which is what occupies a hegemonic position in the academic world today is often criticized for being “unreal”, for proceeding on the basis of assumptions that obviously do not correspond to reality. This criticism however, though valid,…
First the Modi government in its last budget announced a scheme of transferring Rs.6000 per annum per household to a targeted group of small peasants (about 12 crores), obviously with an eye on the coming elections. But the amount promised…
Numerous agencies from the Labour Bureau of Shimla to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy to Oxfam have been drawing attention to the grim unemployment situation in India at present. The government however not only continues to be in…
India’s stock markets seem to be riding one more bubble. Between 19th February and 29th March, the Sensex rose by 9.3 per cent. The trend has not been restricted to a few stocks. The S&P BSE 100, which tracks 100…
My attitude to the NYAY scheme of the Congress is similar to my attitude to a benevolent monarchy. While a benevolent monarchy is better than a tyrannical one, any monarchy is repugnant compared to a republic. Likewise compared to the…
In its attack on civil liberties, its restructuring of the State to effect an acute centralization of power, and its pervasive purveyance of fear, the Modi years resemble Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. But the resemblance stops there. In fact the two…
The basic income scheme that is in the air these days, which amounts to handing over a certain sum of money to every household to ensure that it reaches a threshold cash income, is an extremely flawed scheme. Instead of…
With Rahul Gandhi’s announcement recently at Raipur that his Party had taken a “historic decision” to introduce an income guarantee scheme for the poor, and with the general anticipation that the Modi government’s last budget will also announce an income…
