The minutes of the Board meeting of the Reserve Bank of India just prior to the announcement that currency notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 denomination were being demonetized are now available in the public domain, thanks to an RTI query.…
Late in February 2019, the GST Council, prodded by the Centre, decided to modify Goods and Services Tax rates applicable to the housing sector. The declared intention was to reduce prices that home buyers would have to pay for their…
When the final session, prior to the impending election, of the current Parliament ended in February, high on the list of the unfinished business of the Modi-led NDA government was its aggressive effort to rewrite the laws regulating wages and…
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that brought the MGNREGS into being was a unique piece of legislation in the history of independent India. It stipulated that employment was to be made available on demand, within a fortnight of being…
What is happening in Venezuela today provides an object lesson on the nature of imperialist intervention in third world countries in the era of neo-liberalism. Imperialism has of late intervened along similar lines in other Latin American countries, notably Brazil;…
The basic income scheme that is in the air these days, which amounts to handing over a certain sum of money to every household to ensure that it reaches a threshold cash income, is an extremely flawed scheme. Instead of…
At first sight it appears to be an enigma. India has been recording according to official statistics one of the highest GDP growth rates among all the countries of the world, so much so that epithets like “emerging economic superpower”…
At first sight it appears to be an enigma. India has been recording according to official statistics one of the highest GDP growth rates among all the countries of the world, so much so that epithets like “emerging economic superpower”…
Jayati Ghosh points out that “mainstream economics has operated in the service of power”, which has made the subject less relevant and reduced its legitimacy and credibility. Economics needs to become more open to criticism of assumptions, methods, and results.…
With Rahul Gandhi’s announcement recently at Raipur that his Party had taken a “historic decision” to introduce an income guarantee scheme for the poor, and with the general anticipation that the Modi government’s last budget will also announce an income…
