When the Goods and Services Tax was introduced, and the states virtually gave up the power to levy indirect taxes which they had enjoyed under the constitution, the centre had solemnly promised that it would compensate them for a period…
At least two state finance ministers have declared it a great betrayal. Many others have strongly protested. But the Central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has decided to go ahead with its decision to…
Now it is official: India has managed to become the global leader in the number of new daily cases of COVID-19 and the worst performing of all major economies during the pandemic so far. How did we manage this double…
The Finance Minister of Kerala, Thomas Isaac, has declared it a “betrayal” of trust. He was commenting on the statement reportedly made at a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance by Union Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, that…
July 2020 marks the completion of three years since the launch of the Good and Services Tax regime. That is long enough to allow us to take stock of how well the new tax regime is performing. If the regime…
I have written about this in the past, but since bad economics comes thick and fast from the representatives of finance capital, especially the Bretton Woods institutions located in Washington DC, there is no harm in my repeating myself. The…
Between, say December 25, 2019, and June 23, 2020, world crude (brent) oil prices have fallen by nearly 37 per cent. They had fallen by over 60 per cent between end-December and mid-April, but there has been some price-recovery since…
India’s central government was faced with a fiscal crisis even prior to the Covid-induced lockdown. Provisional estimates from the Controller General of Accounts of actual revenues collected in financial year 2019-20, or the fiscal year that ended March 2020, point…
Something very odd is happening in the United States. The coronavirus toll keeps rising with no end in sight. The economy has virtually collapsed with more than 40 million people filing for unemployment. Thousands are out on the streets protesting…
It is generally recognised that the Indian economy was already in a steep slowdown well before the Covid-19 pandemic and badly planned lockdown further destroyed economic activity. But what is possibly not so well understood that that a major reason…
