Finance ministers who ruled early, Post Independence India

BOOK REVIEW India’s Finance Ministers A K Bhattacharya Penguin (Business)2023 435 pages, Rs 999/- Finance Ministers (FMs), despite their dour calling, do not always follow the bland, understated credo expected of them. This is one message in this carefully packaged, extensively researched tome on eleven, post-Independence, Indian FMs, till the Emergency in 1977. Three themes […]

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Storm in India’s monetary tea cup

The 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 […]

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Big business owned banks -a Trojan Horse?

Indian Left Liberal intellectuals are letting their shallow ideological moorings show. They support the agricultural reforms initiated by the Union government, including the corporatization of agriculture. But they oppose letting big business own banks, reflecting the colonial disdain for “box-wallahs” (business). Yes, to agricultural reform, including corporatization Farmers in Punjab and Haryana — the “gold […]

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