Can India stay with GST?
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…
What could be wrong with a Fiscal Deficit
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…
The Absurdity of Hiking Oil Prices
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…
The Fisc and the Economy
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…
A Stock Market Boom amidst a Real Economy Crisis
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…
Economic Contraction and the Fiscal Stance of the Indian Government
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…
The Worrisome Return of Capital
In a trend which sees equity markets in the “emerging economies” imitate stock markets in the US, the MSCI Emerging Market Index that collapsed over the month ending 23 March, from more than 1,100 to just above 750 (Chart 1),…
Employment in India: Aggregate demand and structural transformations
Mainstream economic policies that advocate fiscal-monetary austerity along with financialization and speculative transactions have squeezed the pace of expansion for the real economy. A major impact of above has been the dismal state of employment and job creation in the…
A Fragile Federation under Strain
Among the many damages wrought by the inapposite Central government policy response to the Covid pandemic in India is that on the fragile framework of economic cooperation between the Centre and the states. It is clear that the real task…
Labour Rights are in Free Fall
As India slowly attempts to lift its nationwide lockdown, under compulsion of reviving the economy, labour rights are disappearing at an astonishing pace. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, which are States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, took the…