At long last and more than a year after the need for such a scheme became obvious a parliamentary committee has recommended the institution of an urban employment scheme at the national level. The Standing Committee on Labour stated in…
It is thirty years since India adopted neo-liberal policies in 1991, though some would date their introduction even earlier to 1985. Newspapers are full of assessments of the impact of these policies on the economy, and liberalizers from Manmohan Singh…
There is a common trope, fed especially to generations born after 1991, that economic progress and modernization in India really occurred only after ‘liberalizing’ economic reforms were introduced three decades ago. This is a travesty of the truth. Certainly, conditions…
John Maynard Keynes was by far the most insightful bourgeois economist of the twentieth century. He could not afford to be a mere apologist of the system, since he was writing in the midst of the Great Depression and in…
In terms of economic policy, the Modi government must be perhaps the most conservative in the world. During the entire period of the pandemic when millions of people lost their incomes and livelihood support, most governments around the world provided…
India is facing an acute vaccine shortage. The impression that generally prevails is that this shortage is because while production capacity is slow to increase there has been a sudden spurt in vaccine demand since vaccination is now open for…
Following its $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package, the Biden administration has further announced an infrastructure package of $2.3 trillion. But in contrast to the former which is to be spent within months, the latter is to be spent over an eight-year…
On October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against Covid-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations. In the following months, 100 countries…
Of all the decisions taken by the Modi government the most mindless has been the so-called “liberalization” of vaccine distribution. Originally, the central government was the sole buyer from the two producing firms at a fixed price of Rs.150 per…
That the situations faced by India’s migrants are not a matter of concern in policy making is quite apparent Strict to moderate lockdowns are being imposed again, this time in April 2021, terminating jobs in many an establishment employing large…
