The stand-off between the Modi government and the Reserve Bank of India has generated a false discourse on the one hand and an illusion on the other. In this discourse the RBI’s position, articulated by its Deputy Governor, is that…
The ongoing differences between the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government over the central bank’s autonomy , specifically in terms of decision-making, is a classic example of how the weakening of the domestic institutions can potentially destabilise the economy.…
Unless policy measures address the structural problems underlying India's current account imbalance, piecemeal steps like tariff hikes would fail to stall the tumbling rupee. There is an urgent need to bring down the import intensity of the growth process it,…
PM Modi’s signature Ayushman Bharat programme launched on Sept 23, 2018 has been touted by most in the mainstream media as nothing short of a revolution with some calling it the biggest healthcare programme in the world. Is that so?…
The Federal Reserve of United States has raised short term benchmark interest rates for the third time this year. With this increase, the benchmark rates have crossed the 2 percent mark for the first time since 2008. The FED has…
The eruption of farmers’ agitations across India is beyond anything that has been seen in India since the late 1980s. At that time, such outrage presaged a change of government, with the rise to power of a coalition of parties…
On September 5 an event of great significance occurred in the capital: more than 1.5 lakh workers, peasants and agricultural labourers staged a rally on Parliament Street. The capital has certainly seen much bigger rallies in the past, but not…
In the midst of a crisis reflected in a collapsing rupee, India’s BJP government is acting ostrich-like, burying its head in the ground. Nothing illustrates this better than its much-delayed response to the collapse of the rupee with a set…
The rupee’s current tendency to fall is hardly surprising. India’s growth experience, unlike China’s, was built on the quicksand of a more or less persistent trade and current account deficit on the balance of payments. But there was always enough…
July 2018 marks the first month of the second year in which the much-heralded Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime has been in place. When launched 13 moths earlier, in a propaganda blitz that (wrongly) claimed that this “one nation,…
