The Planning Commission, set up under Jawaharlal Nehru’s Prime Ministership, was a logical expression of an idea that underlay India’s anti-colonial struggle, namely that in independent India, an improvement in the material conditions of life of the people, subjugated and…
Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati has written an invited article on the front page of Economic Times on January 9. He has made a strong case for Narendra Modi’s Make in India (and sell abroad) campaign and has urged the Prime Minister…
The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Dr. Raghuram Rajan, while inaugurating the annual conference of the Indian Economic Association at Udaipur on the 27th of December, questioned the wisdom of the debt-waiver scheme for agriculturists, which the UPA…
The website is impressive, no doubt about it. It is sleekly designed and easy on the eye, and it appears to offer a lot of information on what is supposed to be the Modi government’s ambitious new initiative to transform…
Credit Suisse brings out a Global Wealth Report every year. The current year’s report takes up for specific discussion the issue of wealth inequality. The term “wealth” in the report covers only household wealth and refers to the value of…
The BJP under Narendra Modi has been by and large favoured by fortune. This is reflected not just in the fact that it managed to win 52 per cent (282) of the seats with just 31 per cent of the…
There is a reason why budgets have to be passed in parliament (in India certainly, but also in most other countries). There is a reason why, as per the Indian Constitution, the Finance Bill that details the revenues and expenditure…
The spat between the BJP-Led government and the NDA over celebrations to mark Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary must not divert attention from one important fact. There has been for around three decades now an explicit or implicit rejection of and…
The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, at least the image through which it is expressed, of celebrities descending from limousines in sundry locations to sweep away the “clean garbage” (mainly leaves and such like) which have been carefully deposited there by official…
After months of impasse, India finally agreed to relent on its opposition to allow progress on the post-Bali work programme of the World Trade Organization (WTO), after concluding a “bilateral agreement” with the United States. According to the terms of…
