A False Theory
First it was the Finance Secretary who said that if the government borrowed less then more savings would be available for the private sector to borrow. Then it was the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India who talked…
India’s withering Public Employment
While the neoliberal focus has been on attempts to “shrink the state” on the grounds of corruption and inefficiency, sensible people have long recognised that high levels of public employment tend to be associated with better quality of life for…
Fifty Years after Bank Nationalization
Fifty years ago on July 19, 1969, fourteen large private banks had been nationalized. Ironically the Golden Jubilee of that event, which had been a significant step in the process of building up a new financial architecture for the country,…
Surgical Strike on Employment: The record of the first Modi government
The central government has finally allowed the release of the report of the 2017-18 Periodic Labour Force Survey. The previous government had blocked its release before elections because the survey showed a massive increase in the unemployment rate, worst in…
Modi’s Electoral Triumph
The result of the recent Indian elections, which gave Narendra Modi’s Hindu Supremacist Party a second five-year term, confirms the basic argument regarding the nature of fascism. There is a fundamental difference between the 2014 elections that brought Modi to…
The Global Shift to the Right
We often miss this aspect in our discussions, but Modi’s re-election is part of a global Right-ward shift that is taking place. Netanyahu got re-elected in Israel. Erdogan got massively re-elected in Turkey. The Conservative government came back to power…
An Ominous Tendency
I propose to go back in this piece to the Indian Air Force’s strikes against the terrorist camps at Balakot in Pakistan some weeks ago. My concern here is not with the event itself but with an intellectual position that…
The Gathering Storm Clouds of Recession
The Index of Industrial Production has for the first time since June 2013 contracted in absolute terms by 0.1 percent in March 2019 compared to a year ago. This comes on top of a mere 0.07 percent increase in February,…
Warning signs from External Trade
As if all the bad news from the domestic economy were not enough, foreign trade data suggest worrisome trends on the external front as well. The latest report of monthly trade data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry indicates…
The Modi Years
In its attack on civil liberties, its restructuring of the State to effect an acute centralization of power, and its pervasive purveyance of fear, the Modi years resemble Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. But the resemblance stops there. In fact the two…