A spade must be called a spade. The biggest ally of the coronavirus today as it decimates mankind is the institution of capitalist property rights. The Economist estimates that the actual death-toll across the world from the virus so far…
India is facing an acute vaccine shortage. The impression that generally prevails is that this shortage is because while production capacity is slow to increase there has been a sudden spurt in vaccine demand since vaccination is now open for…
Following its $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package, the Biden administration has further announced an infrastructure package of $2.3 trillion. But in contrast to the former which is to be spent within months, the latter is to be spent over an eight-year…
On March 24, 2020, Narendra Modi had announced that the country would go into a lockdown after four hours! This nation-wide lockdown was to last till the end of May, after which there were local lockdowns but not a general…
On October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against Covid-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations. In the following months, 100 countries…
With rising non-financial corporate debt and evidence of elevated borrowing levels among non-bank financial companies, the fragility resulting from excess leverage has returned to haunt developed country financial markets. The fact that the collapse of a little-known family office firm…
The finance minister’s Budget speech 2021 revealed the government’s plans to establish an Asset Reconstruction Company to take over bad debt from the books of public sector banks for eventual disposal. That suggests that the ARC route rather than recapitalisation would in…
Of all the decisions taken by the Modi government the most mindless has been the so-called “liberalization” of vaccine distribution. Originally, the central government was the sole buyer from the two producing firms at a fixed price of Rs.150 per…
The Biden administration’s decision to stop opposing a proposed COVID-19 waiver of certain intellectual-property rights under World Trade Organization rules is a welcome move. But ending the pandemic also requires scaling up knowledge and technology transfer, as well as public…
That the situations faced by India’s migrants are not a matter of concern in policy making is quite apparent Strict to moderate lockdowns are being imposed again, this time in April 2021, terminating jobs in many an establishment employing large…
