governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
India has excelled in welfare payments since 2020, though the focus on “saturation” targeting encourages large, inefficient spill overs in distribution of free food, free electricity and water supply, cash transfers to all farmers and subsidized “affordable” homes. Nevertheless, many would say, it is better to over supply welfare goods and services, including to the […]
Read More Budget for the right results: Government to step back.Economic 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 growthThe Reserve Bank of India-led Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) brewed a storm in a teacup by continuing its accommodative monetary policy stance—retaining the Repo rate (the cost of borrowing from the RBI) at 4 percent and the Reverse Repo (the cost of depositing funds with the RBI) at 3.35 percent. The MPC is a device, initiated in […]
Read More Storm in India’s monetary tea cupThe faux London clouds and cold plaguing Delhi over the past two months lifted and bright sunlight came tumbling through today with the arrival of the Brazilian President– lifting spirits around. Part of the lift was triggered by the enervating sight of the young men and this time loads of young women in uniform, who […]
Read More Republic Day 2020 – A turning point?The BJP can put India on auto-pilot over the next eighteen months and probably still win the next general election, principally because, things are going well and the combined opposition has still to acquire the characteristics – leadership, resolve and broad agreements – of credibility. This high probability of winning in 2019 should push the […]
Read More Saintliness versus efficiencyPhoto credit: http://www.avaxnews.net The defining feature of India today is bottled up, seething anger. It erupts unexpectedly anywhere — in the plush drawing rooms of the rich, on our choked roads, in crowded, middle-class colonies over parking rights or in the ramshackle dwellings of the poor, over imagined insults and petty money disputes. Saeed Akhtar […]
Read More Albert Pinto’s Gussa Redux(Photo credit: viewpatna.blogspot.com) We are, for the most part, what institutions make us. Some of us, who are exceptional, disrupt the status quo and change the universe. But generally, such special talents are best in small doses. India has too little of compliance with formal institutional norms and a little too much, of the libertine spirit. […]
Read More Budget to Build Institutions
Opinion India 