governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Looking up, from the bottom, our woes seem never ending however calmly reassuring be the top-down messaging. Ending this dichotomy in perception can only help. First, part the veils which shroud facts. We are in a medium-term downturn at best and a short recession at worst. Some recent eco history – Slowing economic growth not […]
Read More Keep our economic ammo dryPolitics is heating up. Elections in Bihar loom in November with Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu* and West Bengal tightly packed together in May next year, just after the FY 2021-22 budget. Bihar remains rural at heart. Luckily for the BJP, agriculture is the bright star in the Indian economy with expected growth of 3%. Doesn’t […]
Read More The price of fiscal exuberanceIt is difficult not to eulogize the lonely migrant worker trudging his way home on deserted locked-down highways and sometimes not reaching his destination. Some of this is guilt because of the economic and physical hardships they are suffering. They have tugged at heart strings by risking death or injury just to get back to […]
Read More The migrant as folk hero“Waiting for Godot”- a play by Samuel Beckett in which a fictional Godot never arrives. The title has now become a code or allegory, to describe waiting forever for something which never happens. The 2014 “election jumla” of Rs 15 lakhs of recovered hawala money to be deposited into each bank account, quickly acquired this […]
Read More Fiscal stimulus – Waiting for GodotPrime Ministers Modi’s address on May 12 was, as expected, a dog’s breakfast of proposals aimed at pleasing everyone. Please all stimulus 10.5% of GDP The Rs 20 trillion ($260 billion) stimulus “package” – around 10.5% of the likely GDP of Rs 190 trillion in Fy 2021 – is touted as a silver bullet which […]
Read More New India – Vocal about local but aspirationally globalExpectations of the post-Covid world being qualitatively better than before are misplaced. If anything, it is likely to be nasty, brutish and permanent, to misquote Hobbes – the 17th century English philosopher of “Leviathan” fame. The twin drivers of Hobbesian dystopia There are two ways India could slip into a Hobbesian dystopia. First, Covid could […]
Read More Keep Hobbes at bay whilst Covid is in playThe depressing sameness of the days for those locked-in as the epidemic rages, is relieved only by the 24X7 flow of electricity – the juice that keeps us all connected, informed, entertained and as summer advances, in air cooled or conditioned comfort. Thank God its not the power deficient noughties! Imagine being locked-in for two […]
Read More Joining the dots on electricityIs Covid-19 an inflection-point in Indian history? And if so, what direction does it presage? Why should this “cough-cough” moment be considered significant? Three reasons appear plausible. Political consolidation First, the Modi government is settling into a comfortable additional medium term – ten year – political run all the way to 2029. Enough secondary support […]
Read More New India – Like Gujarat, minus the sugarCovid-19 has made the Bharat-India divide even sharper. The obsessive, 4G connected, masked and gloved urban Indian checking for updates and worrying about a post-Covid-19 future on the one hand and rural India, carrying on stoically as always, too busy with the daily mechanics of agricultural production to care overly about the “outside” world, except […]
Read More Needed tough love not freebiesIn a quietly subversive “revolt” 47 officers of the Indian Revenue Service, which administers taxes on income, hit the headlines this week with a policy paper “Fiscal Options and Response to Covid-18 Epidemic” FORCE outlining the tax measures government could take to deal with the economic downside of Covid-19. Too young to be seen or […]
Read More May the FORCE be with young IRS officers