On July 14 this year, the shaky government of a debt-stressed Pakistan, won itself a surprising reprieve. The country had experienced a collapse in foreign reserves to less than one month worth of imports and was on the verge of…
Many economists have been advocating a universal basic income for India, an idea that was mooted even in the official Economic Survey for 2016-17. Of course the practical proposals towards this end have varied, some suggesting a common universal transfer…
On April 3 this year, the minister of state for planning, Rao Inderjeet Singh, said in the Rajya Sabha that the government had no data after 2011-12 for estimating poverty, and therefore had no idea how many people had been…
Around a month ago, The Reserve Bank of India, in a controversial circular, reversed its long-standing policy of not allowing banks to arrive at compromise settlements with willful defaulters or holders of fraudulent accounts. A willful defaulter is defined as…
Fascistic elements exist in every modern society, but usually as fringe, marginal or minor elements. They move centre-stage only when they get the support of monopoly capital which provides them with ample money and media coverage; and this happens when…
The Karnataka government’s plan to launch its “Anna Bhagya” scheme on July 1 under which it was planning to provide 10 kg of free rice per month to each family below the poverty-line has run into problems because of the…
How exactly is the dollar’s status as reserve currency related to imperialism? This question has two parts: how this status of the dollar is related to U.S. imperialism, and how it is related to the overall imperialist arrangement. The dollar’s…
After Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Bangladesh has become the third country in our neighbourhood to become afflicted by a serious economic crisis. It has asked for a $4.5 billion loan from the IMF, apart from $1 billion from the World…
Our key theme is the political economy of contemporary South Asia. At the core of these transformations are the fraught and so-called “truncated transition,” where South Asian societies are not making the transition from farm to factory, but the rise…
By far the most significant ‘innovation’ in industrial policy under the current NDA government is the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme. It provides an incentive pay out or subsidy of 4-6 per cent of incremental sales based on domestic production.…
