Educational Matters
I don’t know about the sciences, but in the social sciences in the old days every undergraduate student in Oxford and Cambridge was required to write two essays per week which were then discussed with the tutors. It was hard…
Emerging Markets in Retreat
Whatever happened to emerging markets? For a while it looked like they had secure and buoyant futures, regardless of the travails of advanced economies. Global investor interest focussed on varied countries grouped by acronyms like BRICS and MINTs that sometimes…
The Future of Public Banking
At the end of July, Finance Minister Arun Jaitely placed a supplementary demand for grants in Parliament, which included Rs. 12,010 crore year to recapitalise public sector banks by enhancing their equity capital. This demand for recapitalisation funds was to…
The Debate on GST
The debate so far on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has been largely concerned with the question of compensation to the states for the losses they may suffer owing to the transition to a GST regime. The losses to…
From “Development” to “Poverty Alleviation”: What have we lost?
There was a time when economists were inevitably concerned with development. Early economists of the 16th and 17th centuries to those of the mid 20th century were all essentially concerned with understanding the processes of economic growth and structural change:…
Black Notes in the Stock Market
On 27 July, 2015 the BSE Sensex dropped by 551 points relative to its previous closing value. The index fell by a further 102 points the subsequent day. Such single-day declines need not be a cause for concern. The stock…
Why the Fight for a GST?
The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014, that, if passed, would introduce a Goods and Services Tax (GST) system in India, faces a still uncertain future because of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament. The…
The Socio Economic and Caste Census
The results of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) conducted in 2011 were finally released to the public in early July 2015. And even this was only a partial release, with data covering only rural India and that too…
The Internet in “Digital India”
Among the initiatives launched with much fanfare by the NDA government is the one titled “Digital India”, which is slated to use high speed internet as a core utility and provide citizens entitlements, documents and a host of services on…
The Search for India’s Bulky Middle
For reasons not always well established, the middle class in modern societies is viewed with favourable eyes. Defined in terms that are often subjective, that group is seen as directly or indirectly underlying social stability and driving growth. Based on…