The Modi government must be the most timid in the world vis-à-vis international finance capital. By the same token, it must be the most callous in the world vis-à-vis the working people of the country. The one is the flip…
Preliminary evidence that India’s economy contracted by 7.5 per cent in the second quarter of financial year 2020-21 was, as news, both good and bad. Good because that figure is far lower than the 23.9 per cent contraction registered in…
A report of an internal working group (IWG) set up by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revived discussion on the wisdom of allowing entry of corporate players, including large business groups, into India’s banking space. Though the process…
It is ironic that government spokespersons should exhibit so much euphoria over the second quarter (July-September) Gross Domestic Product estimate, which shows a drop “only” of 7.5 per cent compared to second quarter 2019-20. The expectation had been that the…
Ministers from Narendra Modi to Nirmala Sitaraman are talking about a recovery of the Indian economy from the pandemic-induced crisis. Even the Reserve Bank of India which estimated the second quarter GDP growth to have been -8.6 percent, has seen…
On the fourth anniversary of demonetization, Narendra Modi has claimed that it succeeded in curbing black money. He probably believes he can get away with making this claim because of the passage of time. But most people in the country…
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced governments across the world to increase reliance on debt. The IMF projects the fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP in emerging markets and middle-income economies (EMMIEs) as a group to rise from 4.9 per…
Growth under capitalism is associated with an increase in absolute poverty. Marx had recognised this and expressed it as follows: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery,…
The results of the long-awaited time use survey conducted over January to December 2019 by the NSSO have just been published. This finally allows policy makers and the general public to have some idea of the extent to which unpaid…
Federalism is one of the basic features of the Indian Constitution. In the Constituent Assembly Professor K.T.Shah wanted the term “federal”, together with the term “secular”, included in the Preamble itself, but Dr.Ambedkar rejected it on the grounds that the…
