Tag Archives: Economics

While Keynes saw state intervention as an embodiment of ‘social intervention’ that could achieve full employment, Patnaik argues how states are themselves constrained in their interventions, apart from the fact that genuine full employment can never be achieved under Capitalism. Marx attributed the incapacity of states to improve Capitalism to the fact that states themselves were controlled by Capitalists—what Patnaik refers to as a sociological perception.

This includes details of the origins of commercial banks during colonial times, the bank nationalization of 1969 and its impact on credit markets, the liberalization era of the 1990s and the rise of private banks. The authors have elaborately covered cooperative banks and regional rural banks, explaining their role in financial inclusion, highlighting and discussing the tension between profitability and social responsibility. There is a detailed discussion of the current structure of the banking system, including public sector banks,

PLI schemes assume that lowering costs and raising returns will induce firms to invest and expand. Swaminathan cautions that if the institutional terrain remains weak, firms will expand output without changing employment practices or investing in skills. The result is more production, but not necessarily more secure jobs or stronger capabilities. Competitiveness achieved through informality and insecurity may deliver output, but not the social foundations of a mature manufacturing economy. Her essays, therefore

However, while these are valid points, the new ‘norm’ of calorie intake cannot be arbitrarily arrived at without a systematic assessment of the population structure, work patterns and bio-medical status of the population. An exercise like that, involving professional nutritionists, statisticians and economists will be more than welcome periodically to see how the norms of poverty are changing.

The chapter highlights increased financial inclusion via UPI, economic formalization, and improved productivity through digital business models as key developmental drivers, but warns against complacency. The concentration of data power, a global public good in a few hands remains a regulatory challenge.

To avoid tax and regulatory burdens in their home countries, several shipping firms would register their companies in Panama, Liberia, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean imperial outposts. These registries became offshore tax havens. With a new flag-of-convenience registered in the Bahamas in the late 1980s,

Notwithstanding the struggles waged by the British working class against Capitalism, this work could have deployed a more analytical approach to the history of colonialism and its relationship with the development and the evolution of not only the labour, but also the material origins of that robust post-War welfare state which perhaps would have been a nonstarter, had it not been for the colonial legacy.

The concluding part brings together the book’s core themes through three chapters that examine India’s development journey with both hindsight and forward-looking insight. These chapters confront the paradoxes and pathologies that have emerged over decades—such as the coexistence of democratic vibrancy with institutional fragility

The Congress came back to power in 1980 and late in 1981 it took a huge IMF loan whose condition forced austerity on the two Finance Ministers it had, R Venkataraman and Pranab Mukherjee. All things considered they both had an easy time because there were no major crises.

In contrast, Jagdish Bhagwati was one of the leading global defenders of trade liberalization. While Sen worried about social justice, Bhagwati argued that open markets and rapid growth would lift all boats. His influential Planning for Industrialisation co-authored in 1970 with Padma Desai, critiqued the inefficiencies of India’s import substitution strategy and the ‘Licence Permit Raj’ that was stifling rather than promoting industrial growth. He has regularly and publicly clashed with Sen over the proper sequencing of reforms.

Part V of the book on ‘Media’ has five articles where the authors refer to themselves as ‘journalists’ rather than media persons; each piece contains fascinating details of their encounter with people and events in all walks of life, including challenges that had to be resolved internally within the organization and those encountered in the course of one’s work journey.

The second section of the book deals with the challenges of financial regulation and its relationship with monetary policy. The discussion revolves around the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) which failed in early 2023. The SVB was a successful new age financial institution, with a clientele drawn from the technology and startup sectors. Established in 1983

The author provides a detailed account of her field-work methodology and the challenges faced by her while traversing across borders. Her analysis is divided into ‘two geographic comparisons of contiguous regions in specific time periods’

The key argument of this thought-provoking book is that although the Indian economy is growing, yet its impact is seen to be very uneven

Productivity. Input costs. Support Price. Policies.Investment.Risk. Capital. Market.Insurance.Credit. These have been and continue to be the key lexicons with which India’s agriculture and its economics are articulated and represented. This volume, a collection of essays from varied authors

Chennai saw the flood of the century in 2015, which claimed more than five hundred lives. Four years later, the city hit ‘day zero’, where all the city’s reservoirs dried, and 11.2 million residents had no water.

The book opens with an introduction that discusses the theoretical underpinnings and contestation about cultural globalization and whether it tends to erode the identities and culture of societies or not. Vivek Mohan Dubey starts the theoretical discussion with the ‘Traditional School of Thought’

The book provides a commentary on the relevance of the growing numbers of free trade agreements among different countries in the global economy, with a special reference to India. FTAs have a lot of significance for India. This is not only when India participates in such arrangements with one or the other trade partners but also without direct participation.

Being a highly experienced journalist who covered the Finance Ministry for close to three decades, AKB has also been able to focus on the key events of each tenure which shape our recollections and perceptions of the tenure. This releases the book from the tyranny of the ‘one-damned-thing-after-another’ school of history.

V Murali is a veteran who has spent his entire career in manufacturing, dabbling across various roles, and mastering a critical few, which have shaped him into a leader with a proven track record of a string of successes in business. Here, in the book Hop on Hop off, which comes across as his professional journal, he shares the recipe of those successes, from which scores of manufacturing professionals can draw vital lessons on making a turnaround when necessary.