It is hardly necessary to state how essential water is for our survival and quality of existence, for economic activity, and so on. Indeed, this has now become a policy issue of some import. It is not just that drinking…
The Chinese central bank’s decision last week to let the yuan depreciate in three stages by almost 4 percent against the U.S. dollar, was officially explained as a move towards greater market determination of its exchange rate. Though this explanation…
There is a strong view in certain Left circles, especially in certain European Left circles, that any de-linking from global capitalism conduces to a promotion of domestic reaction. Of course, even in Europe this is not necessarily the dominant view…
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…
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…
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 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…
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:…
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…
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…
