Time use in India
The results of the long-awaited time use survey conducted over January to December 2019 by the NSSO have just been published. This finally allows policy makers and the general public to have some idea of the extent to which unpaid…
A Misleading Signal from the Trade Front
Provisional trade figures released by the Ministry of Commerce indicate that India’s aggregate trade balance over the period April-August 2020 was in surplus to the tune of $14.2 billion, as compared with a deficit of $45.11 billion in the corresponding…
Central Government Fiscal Stance during the Pandemic
As India faces the biggest economic crisis since Independence, it is being led by a central government in denial about the severity of the impact on lives and livelihoods, and spreading false hopes about the immediate future. The Monthly Economic…
Finance and the Economy: Fixing the disconnect
India’s stock markets have revived and touched inexplicable peaks even while the real economy braces for what may be the largest contraction in post-Independence economic history. Having collapsed from a level in excess of 40000 in late February, when the…
Covid-19: Why is India doing worse than other South Asian countries?
Now that India has already overtaken Brazil among countries with the most number of Covid-19 positive cases and is on the verge of even beating the USA, it’s worth trying to understand what has led to this inability to control…
Can India stay with GST?
July 2020 marks the completion of three years since the launch of the Good and Services Tax regime. That is long enough to allow us to take stock of how well the new tax regime is performing. If the regime…
It is High Time to Tweak India’s FDI Rules
Reactions have come in from different quarters after the Indian Government introduced new screening rules for foreign direct investment (FDI) in April 2020. The latest Press Note on FDI (Press Note 3, 2020) has made government approval mandatory for all…
Developing Asia’s External Debt Concerns
There has been much discussion about how external debt concerns are likely to weigh heavily on developing countries in their attempts at economic recovery in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most of this discussion has centred on emerging markets…
Corona Pandemic, Sudden Visibility of Migrant Workers and the Indian Economy
The outbreak of the Novel Corona Virus pandemic has brought to the fore the fact that the Indian economy is run to a large extent, if not to the largest extent, by the inter-state migrant workers. One report has in…
Economic Contraction and the Fiscal Stance of the Indian Government
It is generally recognised that the Indian economy was already in a steep slowdown well before the Covid-19 pandemic and badly planned lockdown further destroyed economic activity. But what is possibly not so well understood that that a major reason…