In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed, two countries that were seen as crucial to propping up global economic growth and even ensuring a recovery were China and India. Prior to the…
As the air in India grows thick with accusations of being “anti-national”, it is worth taking a step back to consider what this means in political economy terms. After all, to characterise someone as “anti-national” you must first define what…
Unemployment has become so persistent a phenomenon in contemporary times that there is a common feeling that it is a “natural” state of affairs, that nothing can ever be done about it, and that the only way to have greater…
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act"— George Orwell The controlled voice of Ravish Kumar on a blackened screen and his stark report on NDTV India on February 19 made for a powerful statement.…
On February 4, after meetings held at Dubai for security reasons, an IMF team arrived at an agreement with officials from Islamabad, which would permit the release of the last-but-one tranche of $497 million out of an SDR 4.393 billion…
As I write, roughly 10.3 million workers return home as the sun sets on 4.9 lakh worksites across the length and breadth of this vast country under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. About 23% are Scheduled Castes,…
The latest fear factor to hit the world relates to the disappearance of jobs. Everywhere now the buzz is about how technology is going to transform work – and reduce it dramatically. The Davos World Economic Forum CEO Klaus Schwab…
In a curious shift in perception, low and falling crude oil prices are increasingly being viewed as a disadvantage rather than a benefit to the global economy. The spot price of Brent crude has fallen from just above $100 a…
In early January, the NDA-government’s Ministry of Finance sent out two contradictory signals. The first was a statement from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that increased government spending on public investment would be used as an instrument to revive a sagging…
There are two basic, fundamentally different, and mutually exclusive positions on development that are in contention in the present period. One, which is the neo-liberal position, states that development requires rapid growth in the gross domestic product; that even if…
