On August 10, the government tabled a new bill in Parliament, with the aim of using its majority to push through a desperate policy initiative in the form of the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Act. The Act seeks…
So it’s official: cash use is back in almost full force in the Indian economy. Cash withdrawals from ATM machines – a reasonable if incomplete proxy for the use of cash in the economy – are nearly back to the…
Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel have just written a paper as part of their work for the World Inequality Reportdiscussing the movement of income inequality in India. And their conclusion is that the extent of income inequality in India at present…
The discussion on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) until now has focused almost exclusively on the distribution of its burden across commodities, on the difficulties of meeting its stringent bureaucratic demands, and on the delays in obtaining claims for…
It’s true: there’s a lot to be outraged about in India these days. The proliferation of heinous occurrences and very problematic policy choices is alarming, and the misinformation spread through official and unofficial media often makes things worse. All this…
A slew of numbers released recently point to rather peculiar and contrary trends in India’s balance of payments. Exports have revived but the trade and current account deficits widen, pointing to an excess of foreign exchange expenditure relative to earnings.…
The BJP government, like a bull in a China shop, is wrecking the economy. A neo-liberal regime, even at the best of times, i.e. even when the economy is booming, brings misery to the vast mass of the working people…
Sikar, situated in Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, has a glorious history of peasant struggles. From 1920s through 1960s, peasants of Sikar fought successfully against the jagirdars. Sikar had an extremely oppressive jagirdari regime under the Raja of Sikar and peasants…
September did not begin well for the Narendra Modi government. As it prepared for a makeover in the form of a cabinet reshuffle with elections 2019 in sight, news came that India’s GDP growth had slowed significantly to 5.7 per…
At first sight, it seems completely inexplicable: a man convicted of rape of his own young followers in at least two cases and believed to have committed many more; also accused of murder in a case yet to be decided…
