West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did. For a start, the erstwhile French colonies’ currency continued to be linked to the French franc at a fixed exchange rate,…
The recent meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) held in Beijing in the first week of September was an important indicator of a new phase in Africa-China economic relations. These reflect both the changing internal dynamics in China…
During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in…
It is more than a year since China, reportedly in retaliation to US-driven restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors and related manufacturing equipment, imposed export controls on two crucial materials—germanium and gallium—that enter into the production of semiconductors and military…
During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the…
A Good deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina’s government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation…
The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded. There could of course be too many safety-pins and too few…
In the past three years, global food prices have been on a roller coaster, rising rapidly especially in the first half of 2022 due to a speculative bubble and then falling from July 2022 onwards (Figure 1). The phase of…
The Sri Lankan government announced that it has reached an agreement with its foreign private creditors to restructure the $12.5 billion of its external debt that they hold. The agreement incorporates a novel instrument: a macro-linked bond for which the payout…
In his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state. The progressive state was one where capital accumulation would be occurring at a rate…
