governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), a new asset class and system for global and domestic payments and settlements, has been under active research and development since around 2015. Oddly, the United States (US) seems relaxed about joining the race. United States makes up for lost time Reflecting this institutional languor, Jerome Powell, Chair of the US […]
Read More CBDC: Minting the FutureThe Reserve Bank of India has an impossible task. It must contain inflation without compromising growth, using four arrows in its quiver- setting domestic interest rates; managing liquidity; using its foreign exchange war chest to fight exchange rate volatility and the mandate to regulate banking operations-the last being an atypical central bank function. It can […]
Read More Monetary Policy needs a supportive fiscal PolicyEcologists and environmental economists’ scorn how superficially countries maintain their financial and national accounts. Amounts spent on building human skills, providing education, nutrition, safeguarding health, land, air and water quality or forests are classified as consumption expenditure in the national accounts, except for the associated construction and equipment purchased. Budgetary allocations in India for such […]
Read More Valuing Our Common FutureEconomic decision makers face a problem. They make tradeoffs between alternative solutions but very few are win-win. Most involve optimizing for economic harm against benefits. Sadly, quantifying tradeoffs remains captive to data and computing constraints in these pre-quantum computing times. The fallback is to rely on gut instincts, ideology, or copycat solutions- none of which […]
Read More India: Taming inflation without hurting growthAfter inflation levels off, hopefully in the first quarter of the next fiscal year, after the Ukraine crisis becomes dormant, yet again, through exhaustion or accommodation (as in 2014) and thinking beyond the growing domestic political contestation, as India prepares for the quinquennial national electoral contest in April 2024, the problem of low growth is […]
Read More India: Export for GrowthPrime Minister Narendra Modi advocated India becoming a developed nation by 2047, as the new national aspiration, on Independence Day this year. This brings to the fore the chicken and egg question – is the relationship between development and becoming rich sequential, does one lead to the other, and if so, which one comes first? […]
Read More Can India become developed before it becomes rich?Global population growth decelerated since 1965, even before “The Population Bomb”, a 1968 best-seller by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, advocated population control if the world were not to starve to death. In 1972, the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth”, which similarly predicted that the world would run out of its natural resources. […]
Read More Population growth- Ticking bomb or blessingIn the noticeably short term, say less than five years, decision paths and trade-offs are clearer than in the long term, say more than ten years. This is why governments make sensible short-term bets but like most individuals, flounder whilst taking decisions from the long-term perspective. Covid-19 management – a triumph of short-term decision making […]
Read More Bridging The Public Policy gapsFor all the brouhaha around the hydrogen economy at Davos and the competition amongst the Indian ministries to garner a piece of the regulatory action around this future energy business, it is hard to find any authentic, consistent information on the state of play in green hydrogen (GH) from government websites of the concerned ministries. […]
Read More Green Hydrogen -Pie in the sky or Game changerIndia has changed. Gone is the earlier hesitation about being coldly pragmatic while keeping the public interest in mind. Foggy Post-Colonial and Cold-War ideological baggage is being stowed away, appropriately. The clear guard rails developed for dealing with the Ukrainian crisis do the country proud—extending principled support for the continuation of the international mediation effort, […]
Read More Being optimistic on India
Opinion India 