In recent times, the clamour for formalising economic activity, or shrinking its unorganised component and expanding the organised, has been heard from diverse sources. There are those who want formalisation to occur because the unorganised sector is seen as being…
Voices questioning the claim that nations and the majority of their people stand to gain from global trade are growing louder. The one difference now is that the leading protagonist of protectionism is not a developing country, but global hegemon…
The government’s confused policy response to the rupee’s decline signals its growing concern about India’s external payments position in general, and the deteriorating current account balance, in particular. The rupee’s recent depreciation had initially been dismissed as reflecting global developments…
July 2018 marks the first month of the second year in which the much-heralded Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime has been in place. When launched 13 moths earlier, in a propaganda blitz that (wrongly) claimed that this “one nation,…
Even if free trade is ultimately broadly beneficial, the fact remains that as trade has become freer, inequality has worsened. One major reason for this is that current global trade rules have enabled a few large firms to capture an…
A favourite trope of Northern economic policy makers – especially those in the United States – is that China systematically manipulates the exchange rate of the RenMinBi to ensure greater external competitiveness, and that this amounts to an unfair trade…
Sometimes even a tiny news-item can reveal volumes about capitalism. The Indian stock market, as is well-known, is booming at present: the 30-share Sensex closed at a new high of 38,278.75 on Monday the 20th of August, and the broader-based…
Slow growth of employment has been a remarkable feature of economic change in India during the post-liberalisation period. Economic growth over this period has been highly uneven across different sectors and regions. The rate of growth of agriculture and manufacturing…
Recent data from the Annual Survey of Industries, covering up to 2015-16, provide some interesting insights into the changing nature of industrial employment in India. In the decade up to 2015-16, there was a significant increase in the number of…
These are uncertain times for emerging market economies (EMEs) like India. They have been important destinations for investments financed by the cheap liquidity that was pushed into the financial system by developed country central banks attempting to address the financial…
