The Inhumanity of Capitalism
For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an…
Sanctions within a Regime of Neo-liberalism
Before joining the neo-liberal order, India used to have “rupee payment arrangements” with the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries under which the main international reserve currency, the US dollar, was used neither for settling transactions nor even as…
Fiscal Stringency in a Time of Pandemic
Through out the continuing pandemic, the Indian government’s fiscal reticence has made it a significant outlier in the world. Advanced economies have gone all out in terms of expanded public spending. Their governments quickly abandoned the (flawed) arguments about the…
US Inflation and India’s Economic Recovery
The very day, December 11, when the Indian finance ministry spuriously claimed a robust recovery in the post-pandemic Indian economy, newspapers carried news of an acceleration in the US inflation rate. The inflation rate in November 2021 over November of…
State Finances: The looming crisis
State governments in India are experiencing a fiscal crisis that would adversely impact their development and welfare expenditures in the coming years. As per the revised estimates for 2020-21 collated by the Reserve Bank of India, after averaging 2.7 per…
India’s Post-pandemic Economic Recovery
The pandemic alas is not yet over, but there are no economic disruptions in the current fiscal year in the form of lockdowns or workers’ absence. The economy’s performance therefore can no longer be attributed to the prevalence of the…
A ‘Mini-cycle’ in the Commodities Sphere?
According to the US Department of Labour, consumer prices spiked at 6.2 percent higher in October than a year earlier. The resulting inflation fears are beginning to influence the thinking of central bankers in the developed countries. As that happens,…
The Scourge of Demonetisation
In the entire history of post-independence India, no single economic measure has been as devastating for the people and as utterly futile in achieving its stated objectives, as the demonetisation of currency notes, of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination,…
India’s Coal Crisis
In recent weeks the media have featured stories bordering on the alarmist about a coal shortage in India. Coal inventories with thermal power plants had fallen to levels at which major country-wide power outages seemed inevitable. Fortunately, that has not…
Measuring Unemployment Trends in India
Unlike in the advanced capitalist countries, a reduction in employment opportunities in India takes the form not of a larger proportion of the work-force being shut out of employment, but of almost everyone having lesser number of days of work.…