Public memory in India is amnesic. Still, it is difficult to forget that Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 on the plank of promoting development, aptly captured by ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’. This is not a novel idea in…
The Modi government is completing three years in office amid much fanfare and propaganda about its achievements during this period. Aiding this propaganda is the advance estimate of GDP which projects a growth-rate of 7.11 percent for 2016-17, a shade…
Providing a UBI in place of existing schemes will not change the fundamentally unequal income distribution in the country. The way to resolve the crisis is a redistribution from the rich to the poor. Click to read the full article…
There is a lot of buzz globally around the idea of a Universal Basic Income (or UBI). It is perceived as one way of coping with technology-induced unemployment that is projected to grow significantly in the near future, as well…
India’s anti-colonial struggle was not just about getting independence from foreign rule. In fact, this struggle would not even have succeeded if it had been only about that. It was simultaneously, and indeed had to be, an effort to forge…
We all know that the world is an unequal place, both across and within countries. We also know that across the world, people are expressing their anger and disgust at this inequality. This is increasingly revealed in extreme and often…
The World Bank and the IMF have started a new trend of late, of taking “progressive” positions in their publications even while insisting on the same old “conditionalities” in policy negotiations with particular countries. In accordance with this new trend…
As I write, roughly 10.3 million workers return home as the sun sets on 4.9 lakh worksites across the length and breadth of this vast country under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. About 23% are Scheduled Castes,…
At first sight the “Make in India” campaign appears innocuous, a pipe-dream perhaps but a rather harmless one. If the world’s big companies come to “make” things in India for selling all over the world, which is the thrust of…
Now that the UK is set to stop its foreign aid to India at the end of this year, it is worth considering what message this sends not just to India but to the wider world. It can be justified as…
