Trump's victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak.

The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba and Bolivia.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize, the Nobel for "Economic Sciences", has always been controversial. This is true of the 2024 award to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson as well.

This year's Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three US-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations.

Several international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call "poverty". The World Bank has been in it for some time, but now we have a new measure of "Multidimensional Poverty" brought out by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

In early October, in a show of pique, a European Commission proposal to impose additional tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent (on top of the pre-existing 10 per cent) on electrical vehicles (EVs) imported from China, was passed by a majority vote in the European parliament.

The "inevitable striving of finance capital", Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) "to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory".

The fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it).

Europe is clearly battling to stall its decline in the global economy. Most recently, the Mario Draghi report on “The future of European competitiveness” commissioned by the European Union reflected that sentiment.

West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did.

During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in conformity with the wishes of the electorate.

During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the “unilateral” western sanctions.

Recently Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge quipped that the 'U' in UPS (Unified Pension Scheme) stands for U-Turn. While that may be seen as stretching interpretative liberty, he was touching a raw nerve.

A Good deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina's government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation in that country.

The latest controversy in the South Asian University, over an interview with a philosopher mentioned in a student's research proposal that resulted in severe backlash and eventual resignation of an eminent foreign professor, would appear to be ludicrous if it were not so tragic.

India's quasi-federal democracy, which was in danger of collapsing into a centralised authoritarianism, seems to be holding up.

The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded.

The popular insurrection that ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government offers important lessons for the international community and neighboring India.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it has reached an agreement with its foreign private creditors to restructure the $12.5 billion of its external debt that they hold. The agreement incorporates a novel instrument: a macro-linked bond for which the payout is linked to the GDP performance of the debtor country.

In the search for the next country that would transit from backward to advanced nation status, India’s name sometimes features. This is partly because the idea has been mooted by Prime Minister Narender Modi, who promises to make India a ‘developed nation’ by 2047.

In his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state.

The coming to power of governments led by fascists is either a reality or a threat today over large parts of the world. In Europe at present there are several countries where fascists are leading governments; France was on the verge of being added to this list, in which case it would have been the second major European power, after Italy, to have a fascist government.

Figures on India's balance of payments in financial year 2023-24, recently released by the Reserve Bank of India, have added to the hype on India's growth story.

For the French elections which Emmanuel Macron has called in the wake of the impressive showing by the Far-Right in the European parliamentary polls, four parties on the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, the Greens, and France Unbowed (of Jean-Luc Melenchon), have come together to form a New Popular Front to take on the fascist challenge of Marine Le Pen.

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty.

The election results, which gave both the BJP and the NDA far lower seats than they had in the previous parliament and led to a coalition government, surprised many. But now, attention has shifted to assessing what that would do to the behaviour and policies in different spheres of this version of a Modi-led government.

The fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

There has been a significant diffusion of production occurring in the world economy. Many call this phenomenon a shift from a US-led world economy to a "multipolar world economy", but no matter what one thinks of this description, the fact of diffusion is indubitable.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's inability to secure a parliamentary majority in India's general election has shattered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility. Modi will now have to rely on coalition partners to pass legislation, potentially curbing his efforts to consolidate power.

Against all odds, in the elections to India’s parliament, whose results were announced last week, the opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance managed to prevent the rampaging ruling party, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from securing a majority on its own.

A Distinction is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems).

The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have come as a shock to those who had mistakenly believed in the problematic exit polls, which continued the narrative so assiduously cultivated by the previous Modi government.

The current protests in US university campuses demanding "divestment" from firms linked to Israel's military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

Each strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

Less than a year back, a former chief executive of Mastercard, Ajay Banga, was in a surprise move picked to head the World Bank. Putting a Wall Street player addicted to profits in charge of a development institution claiming to help lift poor countries out of their underdevelopment seemed incongruous.

John Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker.

Thames Water, one of England's many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing.

India's government has since the year of its G20 Presidency claimed to have restored the country's role as the 'Voice of the South' in global dialogues. That is often backed up by reference to its efforts to focus attention on the problem of debt stress and default in poor developing countries, and to the induction of the African Union into the G20.

The other day the Chief Executive Officer of Niti Ayog made a fantastic claim, that the poverty ratio in India had fallen below 5 percent according to the 2022-23 consumption expenditure survey data.

There is a paradox at the core of the efflorescence of science that has occurred over the last millennium. In essence this efflorescence has the potential to increase human freedom immensely.

At the time of writing, the 13th ministerial meet of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is under way in Abu Dhabi. Among the many issues that are being discussed are two of concern for less developed countries generally and India in particular.

Indian federalism is on the verge of breakdown. Ministers from opposition-ruled States have taken to the streets in New Delhi to protest against discrimination by the Centre.

In The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing that the barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism;

The BJP government holds that truth is what Modi says; if evidence points otherwise then evidence must be wrong and should be suppressed. Modi says that India never had it so good as during the last decade of his government; but since official statistics contradict him, the statistics must be wrong and the statistical system must be changed.

Recruitment drives held over the last week of January, in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Rohtak in Haryana, for Indian workers to undertake construction and caregiver jobs in Israel have captured global attention.

There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted "unproductive workers";

The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery.

On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio.

The significance of Lenin's Imperialism lay in the fact that it totally revolutionised the perception of the revolution. Marx and Engels had already visualised the possibility of colonial and dependent countries having revolutions of their own even before the proletarian revolution in the metropolis.

The recent collapse of the protracted negotiations to restructure Zambia's external debt, following a default in November 2020, underlines the failure of the prevailing international financial architecture to address global challenges.

We observe a strange phenomenon everyday, so strange that its strangeness goes generally unnoticed. Government spokespersons from the prime minister downwards go on repeating ad nauseam that India is the most rapidly growing major economy in the world today, that it will soon become a 5 trillion dollar economy, and that it has overtaken China in terms of the growth rate of the gross domestic product.

A longish bull-run that added to investor cheer over Christmas week 2023 took the most cited index of Indian stock market activity, the Sensex, to a record 77,240 level on the last trading day of the year.

Argentina's new president Javier Milei proposes to use US dollars as the currency of his country, while abolishing its central bank altogether. What is involved in this proposal is not just maintaining a fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the domestic currency, but an abolition of the domestic currency altogether.

Imperialist hegemony over the third world is exercised not just through arms and economic might but also through the hegemony of ideas, by making the victims see the world the way imperialism wants them to see it.

Imagine a country that is exposed to relatively unrestricted trade. There are two obvious problems that it can face because of this trade policy: the first is a balance of payments problem because its exports are insufficient relative to its imports.

Neo-Liberalism propagates a set of outright falsehoods to present itself in a favourable light compared to the preceding dirigiste regime in India. The basic theme is to suggest that under neo-liberalism there has been such an acceleration of the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product that the people as a whole have become much better off.

The wisdom of pursuing a strategy of export-led growth has been discussed among development economists for at least half a century, ever since the so-called East Asian ''miracle'' started to be contrasted with the comparatively sluggish growth experience of countries like India that were pursuing, in the World Bank's language, an ''inward looking'' development strategy.

One of the striking findings of the Bihar Caste Survey, which bears out what the Left has been asserting for a long time, is that absolute poverty in the country is far more pervasive than what successive governments in India have been claiming.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had witnessed the emergence of two different paradigms of colonialism: the first, of which India was the classic example, involved the conquest of countries which had had a history of established central administrations.

In an economy like ours where the work-force is not neatly divided into "the employed" and "the unemployed", and instead there is massive and growing casualisation of work, measuring unemployment is a tricky business.

Significant segments of the non-Communist Western Left see the developing contradiction between the United States and China in terms of an inter-imperialist rivalry.

All fascistic outfits have one common characteristic: they reject outright all evidence that goes against the narrative they spin; and the Hindutva elements in power in India are no exception.

In response to the attack by Hamas on October 7, Israeli forces have not only pounded the Gaza strip with massive bombing, killing nearly 2000 Palestinians and wounding at least 7000 (till Friday night), but have cut off all supplies of food, electricity, gas and water to Gaza.

India has a robust and admired statistical system. But the government is suppressing data to suit its narrative. It is perilous not to know the reality of the governed.

Regulating financial activity in global commodities markets, while important, is not enough to stave off rising food insecurity. Policymakers must also take measures to help developing countries build up reserves of essential items and cope with price fluctuations, possibly through a publicly administered virtual reserve mechanism.

One of the most intriguing questions at present is why Europe's political leadership has become complicit in what appear to be US efforts at undermining European economies.

The Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits.

The current upsurge in prices in India is led by food prices. In July 2023 while retail inflation was 7.44 per cent (over July of the previous year), food price inflation, which covers all food items including foodgrains, vegetables, milk products and such like, was 11.5 per cent.

The G-20 meeting in Delhi was occurring in the midst of an acute economic crisis of the world economy. The advanced capitalist economies are expected by the IMF to witness a growth slowdown from 2.7 per cent in 2022 to 1.3 per cent in 2023.

Liberal bourgeois writers tend to explain the problems that arise under capitalism not by the immanent tendencies of the system but by the capriciousness of particular governments.

At the Johannesburg summit of the BRICS countries, it was decided to expand the group beyond its original five, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, to include six more countries. These are: Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

When BJP rule in the country is dead and gone, a good deal of the damage it has caused to the Indian society, polity and economy will no doubt be reversed. But there are at least two areas where such reversal will be difficult.

Much of the ex-colonial world, having set up dirigiste regimes to wrest control over its natural resources from metropolitan capital and to build up industries behind protectionist walls, was sought to be re-assimilated into imperialist hegemony through the neo-liberal economic order; but in one segment of this world decolonisation itself was never completed.

On July 14 this year, the shaky government of a debt-stressed Pakistan, won itself a surprising reprieve. The country had experienced a collapse in foreign reserves to less than one month worth of imports and was on the verge of defaulting on its external debt of more than $120 billion.

Many economists have been advocating a universal basic income for India, an idea that was mooted even in the official Economic Survey for 2016-17.

On April 3 this year, the minister of state for planning, Rao Inderjeet Singh, said in the Rajya Sabha that the government had no data after 2011-12 for estimating poverty, and therefore had no idea how many people had been lifted out of poverty since then.

At first look, the evidence is worrying. Goods exports from India in June dropped to an 8-month low of $33 billion having fallen sharply by 22 per cent year-on-year. Moreover, that decline was not a one-off event.

With three middle income countries serving or designated as consecutive Presidents of the G20, it is expected to serve as a forum to advance dialogue on debt justice and climate finance. But progress may be slow and limited.

Several major economists have put forward theories predicting a falling tendency of the rate of profit under capitalism; Marx had seen in this fact an awareness on their part of the essential transitoriness of the capitalist system.

The June 22-23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact promised to catalyze a revolution in climate finance and empower the Global South. But it failed to meet its lofty goals, concluding without a single firm commitment or concrete proposal to help developing countries reduce their debt burden and move away from fossil fuels.

Nothing, not even Hindenburg Research, seems to stop the advance of Indian big business. The Adani Group continues with its acquisitions, even if at a slower pace, and has been able to persuade financial markets to lend it more money, notwithstanding assessments that it is over-dependent on debt.

India and other third world countries can morally justify their being a part of G-20 alongside the imperialist powers, only if they raise common and pressing problems of the third world as a whole at G-20 meetings.

On July 1, Sri Lanka's parliament approved through a majority 122-versus-62 vote, a plan to restructure the government's domestic debt totalling 15.4 trillion Sri Lankan rupees (SLR) at the end of March 2023.

Fascistic elements exist in every modern society, but usually as fringe, marginal or minor elements. They move centre-stage only when they get the support of monopoly capital which provides them with ample money and media coverage; and this happens when there is a capitalist crisis that substantially increases unemployment.

Apprehensions by India and other countries of possible excesses in capital inflows and the inflationary impacts led them stiffen the domestic interest rates. The Fed, however has reversed its policy to meet domestic inflation by pitching the US Fed interest rate high.

The Karnataka government's plan to launch its "Anna Bhagya" scheme on July 1 under which it was planning to provide 10 kg of free rice per month to each family below the poverty-line has run into problems because of the Food Corporation of India's unwillingness to sell any rice to that state.

How exactly is the dollar’s status as reserve currency related to imperialism? This question has two parts: how this status of the dollar is related to U.S. imperialism, and how it is related to the overall imperialist arrangement.

After Sri Lanka and Pakistan, Bangladesh has become the third country in our neighbourhood to become afflicted by a serious economic crisis. It has asked for a $4.5 billion loan from the IMF, apart from $1 billion from the World Bank and $2.5-3 billion from multilateral agencies and donor nations.

Making the global food system more sustainable and equitable represents a huge and complex undertaking that necessarily involves difficult trade-offs. The tension between responding to short-term increases in fertilizer prices and implementing long-term strategies for combating climate change is a case in point.

The estimates of India's Gross Domestic Product for the fourth quarter of 2023 were released on May 31. These show a growth rate of 6.1 per cent over the fourth quarter of the previous year, which is higher than the 4.4 per cent growth that the October-December quarter had recorded over the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

Many economists these days talk of a process of "de-globalisation" taking place; some others talk of the neoliberal regime of yesteryears no longer existing.

Most people, including even trained economists, fail to appreciate the fact that an exchange rate depreciation, if it is to work in reducing the trade deficit in a capitalist economy, must necessarily hurt the working class by lowering the real wage rate.

Under pressure from globalised finance capital, most countries of the world have enacted legislation fixing the size of the fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP; generally it is 3 per cent, and in India it is 3 per cent for the centre and 3 per cent for the states.

In a barely noticed development, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has "reformed" and extended the conditions it imposes in return for emergency balance of payments support to less developed countries with stressed external accounts.

A New York Times News Service report reproduced in The Telegraph of Kolkata (May 7), discusses the findings of a global public opinion survey carried out by the Bennett Institute of Public Policy of Cambridge University.

The data on unemployment brough out by the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy (CMIE) present a grim picture. Not only has the unemployment rate increased sharply for some years now, starting from even before the pandemic, but the figure which had shot up during the pandemic has not come down much despite the recovery that has occurred in the level of GDP from its trough.

Ministers, central bankers, officials and civil society activists returning home from Washington after the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund held in April 2023 were not clear as to what the outcomes of the meetings, however minor, were.

Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has finally acknowledged what has been obvious to most people for quite some time, namely that the imposition of sanctions against countries that the US is hostile to, runs the risk of jeopardising the hegemony of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Government officials never tire of repeating that India is currently the fastest growing major economy in the world. What they never mention is the fact that India had witnessed perhaps the sharpest absolute drop in GDP among the major economies of the world in 2020-21.

Except in war-time, capitalism invariably seeks to control inflation by creating a recession; and this is so even when the inflation has been caused by an autonomous increase in capitalists' profit-margins which are downward inflexible and hence would not be reduced by a recession.

Rubber prices, which had recovered a little after the fall during the pandemic, have collapsed again, with the farmers in Kerala, which grows 80 per cent of the country's rubber crop, being badly hit.

There is a commonly-held view that while capitalism in its early stages brings about unemployment and hence an accentuation of poverty, this initial damage is subsequently reversed as it keeps growing.

The month of March 2023 has come out to be yet another nightmarish experience for the world of global finance, after the collapse of Washington Mutual and Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

In her 2022 book, The Making of a Catastrophe (Aleph), on the disastrous economic fallout of COVID-19, Indian development economist Jayati Ghosh writes that job losses and food insecurity were significantly higher for women.

There is nothing mysterious about the reasons for the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank and the Signature Bank in the United States.

For a large part of the dirigiste period, the gross domestic product of the Indian economy grew at a rate of around 4 per cent per annum or less, which, though an improvement compared to the colonial era that had witnessed virtual stagnation, was not very impressive.

C.P. Chandrasekhar speaks to us about the Silicon Valley Bank crisis and whether the financial contagion is likely to spread to India and other countries.

There is an overwhelming asymmetry between the level of "development" and the possession of natural resources among countries of the world. Take the group of most advanced countries, the G-7 comprising the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada.

It comes close to a fairytale as one starts narrating the meteoric rise and fall of the Adani Group in terms of its changing fortunes or valuations in the market.

There is an impression shared by even progressive intellectuals that the entity that goes by the name of ''physical infrastructure'' is an absolute necessity in each country, and that the actual amount of infrastructure that exists is always less than what is needed.

Recently, a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court put forth the idea of setting up an expert committee that could recommend ways to protect common investors from market events.

Over the past two decades, Indian multi-billionaire Gautam Adani's close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi have helped the Gujarati businessman become Asia's wealthiest person.

A strike on the Adani group by short-seller the U.S.-based Hindenburg Research has led to the unravelling of the Gautam Adani story, which celebrated the spectacular rise, in an extremely short period of time, of the wealth of a man and his business empire.

A strike on the Adani group by short-seller the U.S.-based Hindenburg Research has led to the unravelling of the Gautam Adani story, which celebrated the spectacular rise, in an extremely short period of time, of the wealth of a man and his business empire.

Gautam Adani's calling Hindenburg's allegations of fraud against him an attack on the Indian nation is a matter of particular significance. Just before this episode, the BBC documentary on Modi had been labelled a product of the colonial mindset by the government and hence also construed to be an attack on the Indian nation.

Economic theory makes much of "rent goods". A "rent good" is one whose supply cannot be augmented at will, simply through investing more on its production; its supply is subject to constraints imposed by nature, because of which there is a certain maximum rate of long-run growth which is exogenously given and cannot be altered at will.

The semi-annual Financial Stability Report from India's central bank signals that India's banking system, especially the public banking system, has put behind it the stress from disturbingly high non-performing or bad loans on its books.

All regimes based on class antagonism require a discourse to legitimise class oppression and this discourse in turn requires a vocabulary of its own. The neoliberal regime too has developed its own discourse and vocabulary and a key concept in this vocabulary is "populism".

To mitigate the worst effects of climate change and prevent societal breakdown, we must shift to renewable energies and reduce extreme inequality. But doing so would require massive increases in public spending, which is why governments must overhaul their outdated and regressive tax systems.

Jayati Ghosh warns against historically disastrous approaches to the sovereign-debt crisis hitting low- and middle-income countries.

The IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva has now openly admitted that the year 2023 will witness the slowing down of the world economy to a point where as much as one-third of it will see an actual contraction in gross domestic product.

India's current account deficit for the second quarter (July-September) of 2022-23 has reached a massive $36.4 billion which is 4.4 per cent of the gross domestic product, higher than at any time in the last nine years.

The hegemony of imperialism is invariably associated with an agrarian crisis in countries of the global south; in fact agrarian crisis is just the other side of the ascendancy of imperialism. This is evident from the case of Indian agriculture.

There has been much discussion in public about the index of industrial production for October 2022 being 4 per cent lower than the index for October 2021; and quite rightly so, since no obvious explanations like a Covid-induced lockdown or even its residual lingering effects can be adduced to explain this fall.

The fact that income and wealth inequalities have increased quite dramatically under the neo-liberal regime is beyond dispute. The empirical work by Piketty’s team bears out the increase in income inequality. They use income tax data to infer about the share of the top 1 per cent of the population of a country in its national income.

As COP27, the climate summit at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt, ended after a being prolonged, assessments of what it achieved were mixed. But the overwhelming sense was that the summit had yielded little, since on most counts it had not gone beyond the pledges agreed to at COP26 held in Glasgow last year and incorporated in the Glasgow Climate Pact.

A Neo-liberal regime entails a spontaneous change in the balance of class power against the working class everywhere. This happens for a number of reasons. First, since capital becomes globally mobile while labour is not, such globally mobile capital gets an opportunity to pit the working class of one country against that of another.

The post-second world war period had seen a spate of welfare state measures in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in Europe, in emulation of what the Soviet Union was effecting.

The large cryptocurrency exchange FTX went out of business on November 11. Many have likened this phenomenon to the collapse of the investment banking firm Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis of 2008, believing the FTX collapse to be as important an event in the cryptocurrency world as the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the official financial system.

There are two defining and portentous features of the current world economic situation. One, which is well discussed, is the world-wide increase in interest rates in response to the pervasive inflationary upsurge; it would indubitably generate recession and unemployment, which, notwithstanding all protestations to the contrary, is the real objective behind it.

Economics is a subject where the ruling classes are forever trying to promote ideologically-motivated explanations in lieu of scientific ones. These explanations of course can be, and have been, fitted into an integrated totality of an alternative non-scientific theoretical structure that Marx had called "vulgar economy" as distinct from classical political economy.

The IMF's most recent World Economic Outlook, released in time for the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, presents a confusing picture of what shapes the present global conjuncture.

The triumph of the City of London, the one square kilometre next to Liverpool Street station that houses the citadel of British finance, is complete. Not only did it get rid of one British prime minister, whom it distrusted, in the space of just 44 days, but even got a new one of its choice installed forthwith.

The most intriguing question with regard to Liz Truss’ resignation as the prime minister of Britain after a mere 44 days in office is this: what is it about her economic programme that the ''market'' (read ''finance capital'') found unpalatable? At its core after all was tax-cuts for the rich, which the ''market'' should have lapped up.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) for 2022 has just come out, which shows India occupying the 107th position among the 121 countries for which the index is prepared (countries where hunger is not a noteworthy problem are left out of the index).

What is called OPEC+, that is the 13 members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) together with 11 other petroleum exporting countries led by Russia, decided on October 5 to cut their oil production by 2 million barrels per day, starting from November.

On September 23, the value of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar fell to a new low: it crossed 81 to a dollar after some weeks of relative stability when it hovered between 79 and 80. And it fell despite the Reserve Bank's running down of foreign exchange reserves in a bid to hold up its value.

The cessation of natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe in retaliation against Western sanctions imposed on Russia because of the Ukraine war, is threatening Europe not only with a winter with inadequate heating that will take a big toll in terms of lives among poor people, but also with large-scale closures of enterprises; such closures would push up the unemployment rate, and significantly increase poverty and destitution among the workers.

There are fundamental objections to the plan of the government to privatise at least some of the public sector banks. They centre around the fact that such a move will change the pattern of deployment of credit, away from productive activities towards speculation, away from peasant agriculture towards big business (with dangerous implications for peasant viability, food security and employment), and away from domestic to global destinations.

The long-standing debate on whether India's public sector banks should be privatized has resurfaced in recent days. Two articles, besides numerous statements from advocates of 'reform', triggered this round of debate—one wittingly and the other, perhaps unwittingly.

The estimates of Gross Domestic Product for the April-June quarter released by the government on August 31 paint a dismal picture of the Indian economy. Since the GDP in real terms (at 2011-12 prices) shows an increase of 13.5 per cent over the first quarter GDP a year ago, and since 13.5 per cent appears an impressive figure, official spokespersons have been putting a cheerful gloss over it.

Economists distinguish between two kinds of inflation: "demand-pull" and "cost-push". Demand-pull inflation is said to occur when there is excess demand in a situation where supply cannot be augmented, because full capacity output has been reached in one or more crucial sectors.

India's enforcement directorate, still preoccupied with unearthing corruption and money laundering among opposition politicians, has decided to turn its attention to those involved in the crypto business in the country as well.

A Bizarre drama is unfolding in front of our eyes. The Modi government which has been giving away hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees as tax concessions to the monopolists has expressed its opposition ironically to what it calls "freebies", that is to handing over subsidies to other segments of the population.

The hegemony of the US dollar was based on the fact that the world's wealth-holders considered it to be "as good as gold", even when it was no longer officially convertible to gold at a fixed rate, as it had been under the Bretton Woods system, after the collapse of that system.

India is experiencing a job market crisis. Applicants for preferred jobs outnumber vacancies by numbers that make the process a lottery. The qualifications of these applicants far exceed the skills or knowledge required by many jobs.

There are many misconceptions about Scandinavian capitalism. A very common one is the belief that since the Scandinavian countries developed vigorous capitalist economies, without ever having acquired any colonies of their own, they constitute a clear refutation of the claim that capitalist development necessarily requires imperialism.

All is not quiet on India's external economic front. The rupee seems to be on a trajectory of accelerating decline, with its value relative to the dollar (as per the Reserve Bank of India's reference rate) falling from Rs. 76.4 at the beginning of April to Rs. 79.1 at the beginning of July.

When the COVID pandemic affected every one of the world's nations, the way forward seemed obvious, even if difficult to traverse. Given the rapid spread of the disease and its severity that overwhelmed long neglected health systems, and the cost to lives and livelihoods that shutdowns of economic and social activity implied, quick access to drugs and vaccines to manage the pandemic were crucial.

The meltdown in May 2022 in the cryptocurrency world, in which the values of digital coins plunged and rendered some near-worthless, is a wake-up call. It once again shows that cryptocurrencies are nothing but a bunch of insubstantial, digital 'bits' created by speculators as 'coins' for speculation.

The craftiness of imperialism is boundless. In several countries of the world at present there are neo-fascist governments, propped up by their respective big bourgeoisies (all aligned to globalized capital), and implementing neo-liberal policies with their characteristic ruthlessness; in many other countries there are neo-fascist outfits attempting to get into power by promising to their big bourgeois patrons that they would do the same if in power.

Adam Smith and David Ricardo had been haunted by the idea of capitalism ending up in a "stationary state", by which they meant a stable state of zero growth. Marx used the term "simple reproduction" to describe such a state, where there is no net addition to production capacity and the economy just reproduces itself at the same level period after period.

Central banks all over the capitalist world are raising, or are about to raise, interest rates as a means of countering the currently rampant inflation, which is certain to push a world economy that is barely recovering from the effect of the pandemic, back towards stagnation and greater unemployment.

The chancellor of the exchequer of Britain, whose official residence is only next door to the British prime minister's, is Rishi Sunak, a person of Indian origin. Britain's home secretary is Priti Patel, also of Indian origin.

In a new turn to its advocacy of a conservative fiscal stance amidst a recession, the International Monetary Fund in the April 2022 edition of its "Global Financial Stability Report" has called for reining in bank credit to governments as a way of weakening the sovereign–bank nexus that was strengthened during the pandemic and ostensibly threatens bank stability.

There is no doubt that creative industries, along with care activities, are going to emerge as some of the most significant economic sectors of the future. Broadly speaking, the creative industries consist of advertising, architecture, arts and crafts, design, fashion, film, video, photography, music, performing arts, publishing, research & development, software, computer games, electronic publishing, and TV/radio.

For over two years now, the world has been facing a pandemic the like of which has not been seen for a century, and which has already taken 15 million lives according to the WHO, without being anywhere near an end.

More frequent and intense heat waves are poised to become bigger killers in the Indian subcontinent than the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But the government is essentially leaving people to fend for themselves in a foreseeable tragedy, and envisages continued investment in fossil fuels for decades to come.

Russia and Ukraine together account for 30 per cent of the world’s wheat exports. Many African countries, in particular, are heavily dependent on them for their food supplies, which are now getting disrupted because of the war; and this disruption would continue since the war is also affecting the acreage being sown under foodgrains there.

The announcement, on May 4, for a 40 bp raise in the policy Repo rate along with a 50 basis point rise in the cash-reserve ratio by the Reserve Bank of India is claimed officially as a measure to put a rein to current inflation, currently fuelled by the rising food prices rising at 7.68%, oil and fats at 18.79% and vegetables at 11.64% over the same month.

When the world's financial leaders met mid-April at Washington for the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the mood was one of gloom.

So much has been written on the Sri Lankan economic crisis that the facts are by now quite well-known (see for instance C P Chandrasekhar, Frontline April 22): the massive build-up of external debt; the huge Value Added Tax concessions that pushed up the fiscal deficit and made the government borrow abroad even to spend domestically;

Sri Lanka's economy is sliding into chaos afflicted with multiple crises, triggered by a steep fall in foreign exchange revenues during the Covid pandemic, a difficult to manage external debt servicing burden, a collapse in the volume of foreign exchange reserves, and finally the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine.

In the five days ending March 26, petrol and diesel prices in the country had been hiked four times, with more such daily hikes in the offing. On each occasion the hike had been by 80 paise per litre, so that the total increase during the week had been Rs 3.20 per litre, bringing the price per litre of petrol to Rs 98.61 and of diesel to Rs 89.87 in the capital city, Delhi.

The juggling which US imperialism has to do to maintain its hegemony becomes more bizarre by the day. First, it kept needling Russia ("provoking the bear") "on behalf of the western alliance" by expanding NATO to its very borders, knowing full well that Ukraine's joining NATO would be totally unacceptable to Russia.

While the world remains preoccupied with the geopolitical and humanitarian fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its economic consequences are increasingly a matter for concern.

The relocation of capital from the advanced capitalist countries of the north to low- wage countries of the south in the current era of globalisation has received much attention; but there is another kind of relocation that has not received as much attention, and that is of labour from comparatively lower-wage countries of Eastern Europe to the advanced capitalist countries.

Before joining the neo-liberal order, India used to have "rupee payment arrangements" with the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist countries under which the main international reserve currency, the US dollar, was used neither for settling transactions nor even as the unit of account in terms of which the trade-related transactions were denominated.

The IMF, it follows, has changed dramatically since its foundation. When it began at Bretton Woods in 1944, it was part of an international system based on the pursuit of a dirigiste economic agenda.

Neocolonialism was a good fit for the 1950s and 1960s. The word "imperialism" is no longer applicable because recent years have been marked by peaceful discussions between countries rather than coercion by some over others.

Much has been written about the immense increase in economic inequality that has occurred of late and various startling figures have been provided by bodies like Oxfam, which has just come out with a report titled Inequality Kills.

Capitalist regimes will always try to control inflation by increasing unemployment.This has nothing to do with any belief in a stable "trade-off" between the two, i.e., a stable curve connecting the two.

A crucial component of the imperialist system is the colonisation of third world minds. It incapacitates critical thinking on how to solve social problems. A critical component of this colonisation is a narrative about social development that insulates colonialism or imperialism as causal factors.

Keynes argued that the operation of the financial market under capitalism was deeply flawed and the distribution of investible resources could not be left to it. The Indian government is so utterly mindless that it is planning to hand over a largely State-owned banking system to private capitalists, thereby exposing the system to the threat of collapse.

The SBI-Adani deal is a way of changing the pattern of land use in agriculture by channelling government institutional credit through the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy. Such nationalised banks-NBFC deals are aimed at achieving what the farm laws could not achieve; these must be vehemently opposed.

Keynes believed that mass unemployment under capitalism could be prevented through state intervention; but even in the US, the ability of the State to stimulate domestic economic activity has become constrained. This is a new basic contradiction that has emerged in world capitalism and deserves serious attention.

SBI's partnership with Adani Capital is yet another instance of leveraging a public sector financial behemoth to promote the interests of a private group. As in all public-private partnerships under capitalism, the public sector will bear the risk and cost of investment, while the private sector will share the rewards generated through it.

The Modi government is abandoning the basic social philosophy underlying the constitutions through its agenda of privatisation and monetisation of public sector assets. The proposed privatisation of public enterprises is the most scandalous instance of corruption in post-independence India.

Accelerating inflation in the US economy is going to cast a further shadow on India's economic recovery which is already threatened by the persistently depressed levels of consumption. The finance ministry, however, blithely ignored this aspect while making its fantastic claims about recovery in India.

While the government claims that the Indian economy is displaying a robust recovery with double digit growth rates, it is only natural that the economy will bounce back to normal after a trough. But when compared to the pre-pandemic fiscal year, the economy is actually on a downward trend.

No matter how government spending is financed, a rupee of government expenditure is better spent on the MGNREGS than on any other expenditure item. The Modi government alas is too blind to see this.

Signs of investor reticence are visible across all emerging markets. There is a more serious fear of the exit of foreign investors from equity and bond markets, consequent to a readjustment of monetary policy in the advanced economies. Indian stock markets are faltering as well, yet India is one of the better performers.

The significance of the kisan movement extends beyond the immediate context. It obviously is a climbdown by the Modi government in the face of the incredible resoluteness shown by the agitating peasants. At another level it has been a setback for the neoliberal agenda that the farm laws were seeking to promote.

The Modi government has been raising taxes on petro-products to finance government spending; this has led to the dual effect of not stimulating the economy, but the inflation levels. If instead, the expenditure was financed by a tax on the rich, it would have both stimulated the economy and kept inflation levels down.

UN Women has produced a clear and pervasive blueprint on the Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice, which puts much-needed flesh on the bare bones of a feminist approach to the economy, relevant to the contemporary world. Now the task is to do it.

Global leaders, especially in the developed world, still fail to grasp the gravity of the climate challenge. Although they acknowledge its severity in their speeches, they mostly pursue short-term national interests, without clear and immediate commitments to act.

No single economic measure in post-independence India has been as devastating and as utterly futile as the demonetisation of currency notes, decreed by the Modi government in 2016. That it did not achieve its stated objectives was not unforeseen, rather it was quite obvious.

The kisan agitation against corporate encroachment is not a bilateral issue. In the process of fighting against corporate encroachment the kisans are fighting objectively for society as a whole, against subjecting India to food imperialism.

Coal inventories with thermal power plants in India had recently fallen to levels at which major country-wide power outages seemed inevitable. Although it has, fortunately, not materialized yet, why such a situation should arise in the country with the 5th largest coal reserves, is the question.

Education in independent India was supposed to build organic intellectuals; therefore, its curriculum should be rooted in the reality of the country and not imitative of the metropolis. But the exact opposite is happening under neoliberal globalization and the Modi government's NEP further advances the homogenization of education.

The Modi government's attempt to explain India's slipping from 94 in 2020 to 101 in 2021 on the world hunger index, by questioning its methodology is jejune enough; but even more shocking is its total inability to see the reason behind the acute hunger in the country.

In India only a tiny segment of work-force has full-time employment; there is no close correspondence between the magnitude of work and the number of working people. Thus, official statistics in India have for long used not one, but several measures of unemployment, but none of them is any good at capturing unemployment trends.

The weeks preceding the IMF and World Bank meetings have been spent discussing whether Kristalina Georgieva should step down from her current position as the IMF MD owing to the 2018 Doing Business controversy, instead of discussing important issues such as the debt crisis, vaccine inequality or climate change.

The Doing Business controversy has shaken the confidence in the Bretton Wood institutions, but it must not obscure the real problems with their functioning - the disproportionate power of the US; the IMF's deeply procyclical approach to countries that seek its support, and the G7 advanced economies' unwillingness to address global problems.

Neo-liberalism implies a shift from wages to surplus that depresses the level of aggregate demand, leading to an over-production crisis. Since fiscal conservatism in neo-liberal economies prevents State spending, the only possible counter is provided by asset price bubbles that can boost demand in the short run.um.

China's Evergrande group is the world's most indebted property company with accumulated liabilities in excess of $300 billion. Although the company enjoys a grace period to avoid being in default and the government is expected to intervene, would the government relent, that is the Evergrande conundrum.

There have been significant developments in Marxist theory regarding the revolutionary role of peasantry in the transcendence of capitalism. The peasant struggle in India too is not an ordinary one; it compels the government to openly declare who it stands with - the people or international big business.

The freshly issued SDRs by the IMF would provide only a temporary comfort for the heavily indebted third world countries and most of it will go into the private financial institutions who are the creditors of the third world debts.

Climate change poses immediate threat to humanity. Unsustainable cultivation patterns along with climate change have affected food security and caused widespread hunger. These issues are too urgent to be allowed to go unresolved.

A price rise in the emission trading market should be welcomed as it would trigger emissions reduction. However, prices of EU allowance seem to be rising not only due to excess demand, but also because of the entry of financial firms wanting to play with this new commodity, carbon, and the tradable securities deriving from it.

Liberal commentators related Modi's rise with the ascendency of Hindutva. However, Modi rose to power through this ascendency as the person who cemented the corporate-Hindutva alliance, meditating between corporate capital and the RSS. Modi is an intermediary used by the Indian big bourgeoisie to bring about this alliance.

Announced with much fanfare as an innovative means of financing green field infrastructural projects, the NDA government’s asset monetisation plan raises concerns regarding potential returns over long term investments and collateral effects that adversely affect consumers and workers.

Everywhere in the world, public assets that provide basic services to the people, are virtually free, but no longer in India. Behind this bizarre Indian exceptionalism is the Modi government's peculiar agenda to turn everything into a commodity. Nothing is sacrosanct, nothing is hallowed, nothing transcends the market; everything is for sale.

Any increase in the amount of monthly pension given by the centre to the elderly under the National Social Assistance Programme has been ruled out in the parliament. This paltry sum offered to aged citizens is not even inflation adjusted and has not changed in years. Moreover, many people who should be receiving it do not even do so.

The anti-colonial nationalism that informed the struggle for liberation in third world countries was of an entirely different genre from the bourgeois nationalism of seventeenth century Europe. However, there is a tendency in the West to treat all "nationalism" as a homogeneous and reactionary category.

President Lopez Obrador of Mexico has been putting in place a range of economic changes that represent a turn away from neoliberalism and re-institution of a dirigiste regime. Unsurprisingly, he is being attacked by the Western press for this temerity.

ESG investment is much the rage among high net worth investors who are happy to address social and environmental issues, while building a portfolio that enhances their wealth, but misleading hype about ESG investing that rides on public concern to garner private profit is hardly what we need.

The erroneous analogy drawn between the household and the state is meant to keep fiscal deficit and hence, government expenditure restrained, even in situations of mass unemployment owing to a deficiency of aggregate demand and this analogy is, thus, extremely dangerous.

The perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change delivers the glaring message that the apocalypse is now. The novel coronavirus mutates into more transmissible, drug-resistant variants, while climate catastrophe plays out in real time.

Videocon has been in news lately because of the twists and turns the bankruptcy proceedings following its default on a pile of debt has been through. These proceedings question the integrity of the IBC that has been deemed as a game-changer in the resolution of accumulated bad debt in Indian banks.

Long queues of consumers in socialist economies were a source of derision in the West and were attributed to the inefficiency of the socialist system. However, it was not caused by any inefficiencies; it reflected the fact that the system was concerned about keeping down the inequality in income distribution.

The UAPA is a blot on the nation. In no civilized nation can the State pick up literally anybody and imprison them for years without trial or bail; and if the person is found innocent, there is no question of the State being obliged to compensate them for their lost years. This is exactly what the UAPA does.

30 years since the adoption of neoliberal policies, the belief that liberalization greatly boosted India's GDP growth rate even though it increased inequality, is commonly accepted by not just the votaries of liberalization, but even its critics. However, that is an entirely wrong perception.

There is a common trope, fed especially to generations born after 1991, that economic progress and modernization in India really occurred only after ‘liberalizing' economic reforms were introduced three decades ago. This is a travesty of the truth; progress in India has been minimal or even non-existent.

On July 19, 1969, 14 major Indian banks were nationalised. Today, after 52 years, it is important since the issue of privatisation of banks cannot be discussed without reference to this perspective.

Following years of negotiations, most nations have now agreed on the need of a global minimum corporate tax rate to prevent multinationals from evading taxation in the jurisdictions in which they operate. While this is a step forward, it is disappointingly short of what is needed and possible.

Europe should realize that their own governments are operating against their own interests to suit Big Pharma. The pandemic will not be over until global mass vaccination is completed. So even without an international solidarity, it is in the self-interest of Europeans to demand that their governments put people above profits.

There has been an upsurge of extreme right-wing, fascist parties worldwide in a manner reminiscent of the 1930s. Fascist governments invariably serve the interests of monopoly capital. However the contemporary extreme right movements eschew any Right-radical rhetoric from the very beginning, unlike their earlier counterparts.

In a stealthy game played over two decades, corporate India is walking away with huge wealth transfers, largely from the public banking system. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) has not been able to help banks recover the loans they have given major corporate players, who with impunity have just refused to service those liabilities.

Keynes believed that mass unemployment was the chief flaw in the capitalist system; it could lead to its rejection and hence supersession. He thought socialisation of investment within the capitalist system was enough to overcome its flaws and socialism was unnecessary.

The tax proposal decided at the G7 meeting has been hailed as 'historic' and 'transformative', but unfortunately its neither. Changes need to be made by the G20, if there is to be any serious global tax reform.

The NDA government has decided to further tighten its regulation of e-commerce. The amendments go beyond strengthening consumer protection per se. The intent seems to be to rein in dominant players in an area and to exert control on how the large volume of data on suppliers and customers that e-commerce entities gather, is used.

During the pandemic when millions lost their incomes and livelihood support, the Modi government did not provide any cash transfer to the people. This niggardliness is born out of a blind faith in policy conservatism, the bankruptcy of which is now visible to all.

While the global minimum tax proposal in the finance minister's communique before the G7 summit is a step forward, it is disappointingly short of what is needed and possible. Yet it caught the media's almost-undivided attention, because it speaks of a new effort by the richest nations to transform fiscal rules in search of revenues.

The G-7 countries have promised to donate a billion anti-Covid vaccine doses to developing countries, which although sounds a lot, is, in reality, a meagre amount compared to what the advanced capitalist countries have hoarded or need for their own population.

For universal vaccination to become a reality a massive increase in output is required and what stands in the way of it is capitalist property right. Despite largely using public funds to develop the Covid-19 vaccines, a few multinational drug companies wish to cling to their monopoly positions to profiteer from human misery.

As India faces an acute vaccine shortage, the erroneous impression is being made that it is due to a sudden spurt in vaccine demand as vaccination is now open for 18-44 group as well. However, the excess demand for vaccines is not from the demand side as presumed, but from the supply side.

The Biden administration and its huge stimulus package which is to be financed by raising corporate tax rates, represents a shift from neoliberalism. The consequences of imposition of austerity on the third world, even as social democratic measures are implemented in the metropolis, are yet to be seen.

The sudden nation-wide lockdown implemented on March 24, 2020 brought acute hardship to millions of the working poor; no compensation was offered to the people for their loss in livelihoods and they were pushed into a situation of income loss, destitution and hunger.

Patents work by creating an artificial scarcity so that innovating firms earn supernormal profits. But the anti-Covid vaccines were developed through public funded research and not by private firm's money. When thousands are dying around the world, saving lives has priority over firms’ profits, for which patents on vaccines must be removed.

The government is planning to establish an Asset Reconstruction Company to take over bad debt from the books of public sector banks for eventual disposal, so as to postpone the problem of bad debt resolution and to avoid having to recapitalise the banks with budgetary resources, which would widen the central fiscal deficit.

With rising non-financial corporate debt and evidence of elevated borrowing levels among non-bank financial companies, the fragility resulting from excess leverage has returned to haunt developed country financial markets.

The Modi government has mindlessly liberalized vaccine distribution, compelling state governments and private hospitals to buy vaccines directly from firms at prices determined by the latter, when the fury of the pandemic is raging and urgent vaccination is necessary.

The Biden administration's decision to stop opposing a proposed COVID-19 waiver of certain intellectual-property rights under WTO rules is a welcome move. But ending the pandemic also requires scaling up knowledge and technology transfer, as well as public production of vaccine supplies.

With lockdowns being imposed again, a large number of informal workers, including migrants, will lose their livelihoods and face a bleak future again like they did last year. That the situations faced by India's migrants are not a matter of concern in policy making is quite apparent.

With ambition restricted to the core, there is little hope of an adequate recovery from the pandemic, let alone a Green, Resilient and Inclusive one in the periphery. The grossly unequal vaccine access will perpetuate the pandemic's adverse effects for quite some time to come.

When the country is grappling with the worst health crisis it has faced in a century, the Covid-vaccine producers have decided to seize the opportunity to go on a profiteering spree, taking advantage of the Modi government’s incompetence or complicity.

The unfolding pandemic horror in India has many causes, including the complacency, inaction and irresponsibility of government leaders and the continued election rallies, when the threat of new mutant variants was evident.

The official wholesale price index for March 2021 is 7.39 % higher than that for March 2020. Such a high rate of inflation has not been seen in India for over 8 years. The country is clearly witnessing an inflationary upsurge and it has been building up for some time.

The Biden fiscal package will benefit the US economy but could actually harm developing countries, unless global finance is restrained.

The People's Bank of China's network of local currency swap arrangements provide Asian countries with a much-needed safety net, while also strengthening China's diplomatic position.

The pandemic and the associated lockdown meant a drop in GDP and tax revenue both in the West and in India. However, there is a world of difference between the support provided by the two governments. The fiscal packages need to be examined to discover the scale of discretionary fiscal support for the poor.

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed by Joe Biden is one of the biggest fiscal boosts in the world in recent times. It marks a move away from the fiscal conservatism and dependence on monetary policy instruments characteristic of the neoliberal era that began with Reagan.

Along with the process of inducting foreign capital into Indian insurance, the decision to privatise at least one general insurance company and enact legislative amendments permitting an initial public offer of equity by the venerable Life Insurance Corporation of India, implies a move towards privatisation of LIC as well.

Even the blinkered BJP government sees the need for a fiscal policy to increase the government expenditure and stimulate the economy; but it cannot tax capitalists or enlarge the fiscal deficit, violating the dictates of globalized finance and thus finds itself in a bind.

The large European Union-wide fiscal stimulus suggests that the bloc has displayed some good sense finally in looking after its own, but vis-à-vis the developing world, the EU's behaviour has ranged from dismaying to reprehensible to downright appalling.

The features of the 15th Finance Commission's report point to a bias in favour of the Centre that would substantially aggravate the fiscal centralisation that has intensified in recent years, leading to a politically disruptive fiscal crisis affecting all state governments.

A process to curb internet firms from freeriding, started by the Australian competition commission, might culminate in a legislation whereby search engines and social media platforms would have to pay publishers whose content they direct users to. It shall affect Google and Facebook initially, but is likely to cover the likes of Apple News over time.

The hype about the transformative health and capital spending agenda of the Budget 2021 seems like a way of deflecting attention from the inadequate social security provided by the government to those affected by the pandemic. This budget shall only benefit a few industrialists and foreign investors.

A challenge set by the Covid-19-induced economic crisis that would be difficult to address is the external debt crisis engulfing developing countries. While the G-20 with its Debt Service Suspension Initiative appeared to recognise the problem, the evidence indicates that the international community is unwilling to do what is needed.

The shares of GameStop, a brick-and-mortar retailer of gaming consoles and video games, which had been losing value over the past few years, rose by 2000% in January. This rise in GameStop's stock price was driven by a loose community of day traders, thus shocking Wall Street and financial pundits.

Even before taking office, US President Joe Biden announced a rescue package that involves transfers to the working people and shall be financed by taxing the rich. This is in sharp contrast to the Modi government's callous policy vis-à-vis the people.

In its systematic attempt to vilify the farmers' movement, the government claims that farmers from only a few states are opposing the agriculture bills. Not only is this claim false, but the idea that this proposition makes the movement illegitimate, is extremely dangerous as well.

India's recent policy push to promote domestic electronics manufacturing is pivoted on a belief in the ability of large foreign firms to support the development of an advanced parts and components ecosystem. India might end up being a digital colony if the structural weakness of the industry cannot be overcome.

The US is nowhere near as economically dominant as it was even a decade ago. Yet President-elect Joe Biden can take several relatively simple steps that would have far-reaching benefits for the US economy, the American people, and the rest of the world.

The agricultural bills impose a shift on farmers from food to cash crops that would destroy the public distribution system, but that is not what the Indian farmers or even consumers desire at present. We are witnessing a bizarre situation of the government versus people, instead of the usual people versus people.

At a time when the Indian peasants are engaged in a valiant and peaceful struggle for the repeal of the Central government's three agricultural laws, it is important to recall Friedrich Engels' study of the peasant war in Germany in 1525.

Financial indicators are hugely favourable from the point of view of those who benefit from them even when the real economy is performing badly. Thus, in this Covid-afflicted year, amidst economic contraction, both the stock market returns as well as the stock of forex reserves in India registered great increases.

The Modi government must be the most timid in the world vis-à-vis international finance capital and the most callous vis-à-vis the working people of the country. The government's economic policy during the pandemic bears ample testimony to this fact.

The three agricultural laws brought in by the Modi government remove the life-line of the peasantry and carry forward the neo-liberal agenda to its limit. Thus, there can be no meeting ground between the protesting kisans and the government, within the ambit of these laws; they simply have to be repealed.

It is not just domestic firms that are potential beneficiaries of the new farm laws; foreign agribusinesses are a danger too.

Workers at a unit of Wistron, angered by a violation of labour laws, ransacked the unit and the vice-president was sacked after investigation. Such incidents of worker exploitation under rogue managers that lead to similar responses, reflect a tendency of racing to the bottom in the search for manufacturing growth at the expense of workers.

The Indian intelligentsia suggests that the Indian kisans should move away from producing foodgrains towards other crops and import foodgrains from metropolitan countries, but it would take India back to the pre-Green Revolution days.

The kisan agitation in no longer simply a fight for MSP or against the corporatization of agriculture, it is a movement against the hegemonic narrative promoted under the neo-liberal Modi government.

The novel coronavirus pandemic further enhanced the monopoly power of the big tech giants, but the lawsuits and regulatory moves in the West suggest that their easy, unchecked expansion may be coming to an end.

As a trade promoting arrangement the RCEP is no game changer, but it possibly serves China’s interests by giving China a freer access to a 'common market' of considerable size and significance, without the presence of India and the United States, which share the objective of wanting to counter China's rise.

The three Agricultural Bills of the Modi government, against which the current country-wide kisan movement is going on, expose agriculture to the free market. It is a sub-optimal solution since the prices as well as the quantities of production that would rule for agricultural goods in a free market are likely to be socially disastrous.

As the government sticks to recovery hype with the fall in the level of contraction from 23.9% in the 1st quarter of FY 2020-21 to 7.5% in the 2nd quarter, the danger is that such optimism would provide the justification to avoid adoption of the measures crucially needed to pull the economy out of recession.

A report of an internal working group set up by the RBI is reconsidering allowing entry of corporate players into India's banking space, which may restrict access to credit of agriculture and small business sectors and encourage advances based on criteria not focusing on risk management.

Government spokespersons exhibited much euphoria over "only" a 7.5% drop in growth over the second quarter, compared to that of 2019-20, although with the 23.9% first quarter drop, the talk had been of a "stronger recovery". However, even this recovery appears both dubious and immiserizing.

The November 26 strike is significant not only because it protests against the Modi government's brazen attacks on workers and peasants in the country, that carry forward an imperialist agenda, but also because it dissents against the anti-democratic and anti-secular nature of the Hindutva forces.

Ministers as well as the Reserve Bank of India have seen signs of recovery in the Indian economy, but there, of course, had to be a recovery from the deep abyss to which the lockdown had pushed the economy, as some degree of normalcy returned; it is no reflection of any virtue of the government.

South Korea has successfully managed the Covid-19 pandemic, providing evidence of a strong public health system and buttressing the view that besides success with growth, South Korea has also considerably improved its social sectors like education and health.

On the fourth anniversary of demonetization that destroyed the informal sector, including peasant agriculture and led to unemployment, Narendra Modi is not only repeating the claim that black money has been curbed, but also taking pride in that destruction.

The US Justice Department has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Google for the misuse of monopoly while the US Federal Trade Commission is likely to launch an antitrust case against Facebook due to complaints of its anti-competitive practices, but this may just be an election year stance.

It is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one's progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists' incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism and nothing could be further from the truth.

As per the statistics provided by the International Labour Organization (ILO), workers across the world have suffered while the billionaires never had it so good, but the third world workers suffered the most due to the loss of autonomy of their governments in the era of globalization.

The pandemic, just as any other crisis, has become a mechanism for the centralisation of capital arising from the inability of small wealth-holders to face stock-price collapses that the billionaires can face and the pooling together of vast masses of small capitals into a few large ones.

The shift in IMF recommendations from fiscal austerity to enhancing public expenditure, is seen as a telling shift, although this recommendation is nothing more than just obvious, given the pandemic's fall-out in the form of compressed demand and increased unutilized capacity in industry.

Prabhat Patnaik discusses the proletariat's relationship with different segments of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and the Communist Party's tactics towards other political forces, over the last one hundred years of the existence of communism in India.

The Modi government suggests that intervention in the form of MSP will continue, but it was not incorporated in the Agricultural bills rushed through the parliament by this government. Moreover, if the mandis lose primacy, as the legislation visualizes, then the MSP-regime becomes infructuous.

Growth under capitalism is associated with an increase in absolute poverty and the Indian experience bears this out. The period of neoliberalism in India witnessed rapid capital accumulation and hence rapid growth in GDP and yet this very era saw an increase in absolute poverty.

Federalism is one of the basic features of the Indian Constitution, but the tendency of the Centre to encroach on the domain of the states has intensified to such an extent under the Hindutva forces and the corporate-financial oligarchy, that the country is being pushed towards a de facto unitary State.

The process of centralization of financial resources at the expense of the states that had been underway for long has taken on a new intensity under the current government, through the transition to the GST and the Centre's response to the revenue shortfall of the states in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The two bills rammed through parliament last week were not only anti-democratic in nature, but also exploitative. It leaves millions of peasants at the mercy of private buyers by opening them up to monopsonistic exploitation.

When there is a lockdown, and output contracts, it is incumbent on the government to increase or at least maintain its expenditure to reduce the degree of contraction and to enable the population to maintain their consumption needs. However, by reducing the expenditure, the GoI did the exact opposite of what it should have done.

The disaster staring the Indian economy consists not in what we have just experienced, but in what lies ahead and if this disaster is to be avoided, then there has to be a massive injection of demand by the government both through transfers and through direct spending on goods and services.

The 24% contraction in India's GDP is remarkable not only in an absolute sense but also relative to other countries where the pandemic was severe. The stringent country-wide lockdown stopped a host of economic activities from being undertaken and no strong government intervention was done to counter its damaging effects either.

NEP involves a paradigm shift in India’s education system that is highly retrograde and deleterious. It visualizes an education that is in perfect sync with the politics of the corporate-Hindutva alliance that currently rules India.

When the GST was introduced, the states virtually gave up their constitutional power to levy indirect taxes. The GST, however, having been singularly unsuccessful in garnering revenue, the GST cess which is supposed to finance the promised compensation payment to states has also failed to garner adequate revenue.

The Centre could borrow and compensate the states, and finance that borrowing from future revenues accruing to the cess fund, but the Centre went ahead with its decision to stop the transfer of compensation to the states to cover the shortfall in state-level Good and Services Tax (GST) revenues.

India has become the global leader in the number of Covid-19 cases and has recorded the worst economic performance in South Asia or even amongst the G20 countries. Wealth tax and taxes on the multinational corporations need to be imposed and urgent action needs to be taken to tackle the situation.

Prabhat Patnaik in his interview with Subho-ranjan Dasgupta says that Hindutva is a vote-catching device, it works essentially to further the interests of big capital, both domestic and foreign.

Developed countries have opposed IMF support for debt stressed developing countries on the grounds that the money would be used to meet debt obligations due to China, but if China is seen as using debt to buy influence, then that can be prevented, ironically, by paying off the debt.

The high levels of reserves are the result of reduced merchandise trade deficit and overall trade surplus, which includes the benefits of the oil price decline. It indicates recession and output contraction accompanying the pre- and post-Covid crises and thus, the weakness of the economy.

The current crisis in capitalism is not because of the pandemic, but due to the operation of neoliberalism that increased the share of economic surplus in output by keeping the real wage rates unchanged, even while labour productivity increased. The existence of an over-production crisis predating the pandemic has only made things worse.

The Hindu Rastra, that the BJP wants to achieve, will eventually be an authoritarian State, suppressing Hindus and Muslims alike and eventually subjecting them to unprecendented levels of exploitation by international finance capital and domestic corporate-financial oligarchy.

Lebanon has been in the grip of an economic crisis for quite some time and with the coronavirus crisis the world recession has become even more acute. These phenomena are common in the third world and they follow from the pursuit of neo-liberal policies that are not concerned about improving the conditions of the people or the economy.

Under the garb of removing supply chain disruptions in essential medical goods, the WTO is trying to expand free trade in electronic medical equipments and facilitating the North's agenda of consolidating the market shares of their firms, despite knowing that it can disrupt the production capacities of developing countries like India.

The current central government does not feel the need to follow the practice of releasing prisoners, thus displaying a tremendous disregard for human rights. Most of the detainees, who are being held in the coronavirus infected jails, have not been convicted of any crime and are innocent citizens; many are even senior citizens with severe comorbidities, which makes them extremely vulnerable.

The Centre recently announced that it would not fully compensate the states for any shortfall in revenues from GST, thus proving that the Centre's belief that compensation cess would serve its purpose over 5 years, when its contribution was needed, was wrong. The GST regime seemed to be on a trajectory when growth was reasonable, but needed a life support when growth slowed down.

The National Education Policy portrays the objectives of a neo-liberal education policy that aims to educate people merely on the basis required by capital, by excluding the socially and economically deprived section from the ambit of education, while encouraging privatization of education.

Across the world, the governments are under the pressure to proactively allocate resources to address the pandemic leading to a shift in priorities and focus on expenditures that render an environmentally just recovery. Proactive fiscal policies have been adopted in Asia as well, but the responses vary across countries.

The agricultural reforms announced by the Finance Minister as a part of the Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan has paved the way for the global e-commerce and food processing corporations to lock farmers into new corporate slavery.

Despite having a high rate of growth since the adoption of neo-liberal policies since 1991, growth rate of per-capita demand for foodgrains is still low since the real income in the hands of the working class has not really increased in per-capita terms.

India has been a world leader in economic disparities and social discrimination for a while and the pandemic policy response proves that some lives are much cheaper than others.

Fiscal deficit puts wealth into the hands of capitalists without their doing anything to earn it, thus raising wealth inequalities in the economy. Government spending needs to be financed by a tax on the rich, such as a wealth tax or a profit tax.

The "decline in poverty" myth, propagated by the World Bank across the developing world is based on a ridiculously low International Price Line, which does not meet either "basic needs" or nutritional benchmarks, says Prabhat Patnaik. Poverty decline is a highly localized phenomenon in China and east Asia, while countries like India continue to be riddled by high levels of poverty.

Using economic weapons to temper China's stand on the border question would not be easy for India. The presence of Chinese firms in a relatively inconsequential area such as mobile apps was an easy and convenient lever for it to use.

The most destructive effects of Covid-19 in India have not been the result of the disease, but the nature of the government response. The most stringent lockdown in the world destroyed the economy and forced millions into poverty and hunger, but did not control virus transmission. The resurgence of disease as restrictions were lifted and the continued economic distress point to ten major features of state response that ensured these unfortunate outcomes.

A New Deal attempted by any State today through larger fiscal deficit of taxing the rich will run the risk of capital flight and hence financial crisis. Such an effective opposition by global finance will require a mobilized working class to overcome.

The contrast in responses to the BLM movement in the U.S. and the anti-CAA anti-NRC protests in India has to do with the fact that the "educated bourgeoisie" in the U.S. has been more punctilious in playing a democratic role than its Indian counterparts.

The recently concluded EU-Vietnam FTA is likely to increase Vietnam's exports at the expense of other developing countries, triggering competitive policy shifts inimical to long term development. In India, it is likely to be exploited by a neoliberal government to push its agenda to sign similar agreements.

Amidst a dreadful pandemic, the medical staff of several government facilities are facing salary cut. As healthcare gets more privatized, the State's actions seem to compound the rapid increase in absolute poverty by keeping public health expenditure abysmally low.

The Indian industry has been hollowed out by rapid trade liberalization without the requisite preparation to face cheaper imports. Transition from dependence on China for critical products to self-sufficiency would require some fundamental policy changes.

Taxing a universal intermediary like oil is the most absurd among all options to reduce fiscal deficit. It will not only severely reduce aggregate demand but will also increase wealth inequality, unlike a wealth-tax.

Neoliberal policies geared to incentivize private investors while limiting the fiscal deficit, and the shift to a failed GST regime, had sharply lowered tax revenue growth and curtailed expenditure even prior to Covid. The government is now faced with a fiscal crisis, and the economy is in recession.

The stock market boom amidst a real economic crisis in the US reveals the absolute hegemony of finance in a neoliberal system, which is forced to rely on asset price bubbles to stimulate the economy.

Denial of food is a very potent weapon in the imperialist armoury and every step in the direction of opening agriculture to global trade is ipso facto a step towards reducing domestic food availability.

Prof. Jayati Ghosh talks with Number13 about India’s response to the pandemic and its myriad impacts on society. It is not Covid-19 itself, but the highly classist government responses which have destroyed the economy, employment and livelihood of the country.

The performance of financial markets and the real economy have diverged sharply in the aftermath of the Covid-induced crisis. The Fed's actions have a role to play, by infusing the cheap liquidity that fuels speculative investment and lending.

An account of hunger and destitution currently experienced by the mass of out-migrants in urban pockets, provide clear indications of a minimalist state in the process. Closer alliance of big capital and the ruling state further weaken the prevailing labour laws under the false pretext of attracting finance.

The lockdown has disrupted the livelihoods of many people in India, but compensations have not been announced till date. The payment made to private sector employees from public budgets is simply a recognition of the rights of individuals within a capitalist democracy, where the poor have no de facto rights.

The build up of external debt in developing countries is putting further strain on their already dwindling public revenues. Deferring debt service payments by the G20, instead of writing off some debt, will only increase their burden in the future.

The dead-end of neoliberalism, which is visible to even bourgeois thinkers in the metropolis now, is invisible to the Modi government still on the authoritarian-fascist track. Even the revival of post-war "welfare capitalism" will require a struggle by the working class.

Mainstream economic policies that advocate fiscal-monetary austerity along with financialization and speculative transactions have squeezed the pace of expansion for the real economy. A major impact of above has been the dismal state of employment and job creation in the country.

Despite invoking wide-ranging emergency powers, the central government has left the task of addressing the Covid pandemic and financing that effort largely to the states. The resulting fiscal crisis threatens the fragile foundations of India's federalism.

By suspending labour laws in an undemocratic manner, states are exploiting the unique opportunity provided by the national lockdown. It is time we wake up to its authoritarian rule and resist unitedly.

The utter insensitivity towards the migrant workers, the abrogation of labour laws, the opening up of crucial sectors to foreign capital, all done under the pretext of a "rescue package" are a part of the agenda to please finance capital.

The RBI, in deciding its rescue package needs to distinguish between liquidity risk and solvency risk. Rescuing mutual funds which, despite SEBI guidelines, chose to invest in high-risk debt securities may encourage such errant behaviour.

The actual fresh allocation by the Centre in its second relief package is shockingly minimal. Showing liquidity provisions as spending for the pandemic and changing labour laws under the guise of self-reliance only reveal its callousness in a time of crisis.

The brutal suspension of labour laws will not help attract private investment, or raise overall levels of profits. It will, however, lead to a reduction in employment and output for the economy as a whole.

The plan of some state governments to dilute labour laws in order to attract investment is not just ethically vile but economically stupid.

While state governments are expected to meet all the Covid-related expenditure, they have not even been given their legally mandated GST compensation. This centralizing tendency of the BJP govt harms not just the states but the federal consciousness of India.

The deal between the two giants Reliance Industries and Facebook is aimed at ensuring their joint domination of India's e-commerce space. To that end, RIL hopes to use WhatsApp to bring the country's large base of local outlets under its retail empire.

Globalised finance was known to increase inequality and create economic volatility. The pandemic has shown that it can even make crucial state intervention impossible in a major crisis. People everywhere have a choice of submitting to its hegemony or striving for a new class equilibrium.

Globalized finance, by nature, prevent welfare spending by third world governments and enforces their subservience vis-a-vis advanced economies. Delinking from current globalization therefore tantamount to freedom from hegemony of finance capital.

There is ample evidences to suggest that Chinese investments in India have been a help to employment rather than to casino finance. Hence, new FDI norms which corner China do not qualify as good economics in crisis time.

Food and livelihood support must be provided to those who have been forced to bear the burden of the Covid-19 lockdown - and the Centre can easily afford it. Excuses based on public finances will not wash.

Varied intensity of new cases across states warrants a calibrated and state-specific lockdown exit strategy. Owing to disruption in every sector the country needs a doubling-down on food and cash transfers and an overhaul of fiscal and monetary strategy.

The exodus of finance from third-world countries is impairing their ability to manage foreign-exchange reserves. Unlike swap-line accommodation by the US, fresh issue of SDRs will help boost the reserves of these countries without any discrimination.

The Covid-19 pandemic will worsen greatly the magnitude of poverty, brought about by the mass migration of the suddenly unemployed workers in urban areas towards the village, which still remains "the sink" for Indian Capitalism.

Under Covid-related uncertainty, as investors desert global markets and seek safety in the US, the Fed has decided to deploy swap lines to ease dollar-funding strains in countries that matter. India is not yet among them.

As millions are suddenly rendered jobless, the government must enlarge its spending immediately. The current pandemic has brought to fore the fundamental conflict between interests of finance capital and those of people.

With no mechanisms in place to deal with the problem of migrant labourers and delivery issues, Modi government has almost made sure that even its paltry ration scheme does not reach the neediest.

At a time when the economy is in freefall absent fiscal push from the Centre only suggests a desire to favour the rich; those forces who risk losing a part of surplus in taxation to finance government debt.

Images of migrants walking hundreds of kilometers to return home are showing the extent of the government’s indifference to the lives of millions. The almost complete privatization of social reproduction in India has left its legacy in the large-scale malnourishment that makes our population uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus.

To face of a pandemic created by globalization under the aegis of capitalism, most countries are taking a socialist turn. Global economic and humanitarian crises like these suggest an end-game for the free-market system.

In a dramatic post-Coronavirus-pandemic turn, the agreement between OPEC and some non-OPEC oil exporters has collapsed, causing global demand-supply imbalances and depressed prices. Back home Indian governments’ response of raising excise duty on fuel might intensify the recession.

The relief package announced by the Finance Minister is a niggardly response to an unprecedented health, economic, and humanitarian crisis, severely affecting both demand and supply. The Centre does not seem interested in moving much beyond the lockdown.

It is clear from the current pandemic that the tenets of neo-liberalism must be reversed to introduce a comprehensive public healthcare system and a universal public distribution system; otherwise several precious lives will be lost.

The crisis at Yes Bank is only the concentrated expression of the vastly increased financial fragility in Indian Banking. The very nature of a neo-liberal economy requires financial instability for sustaining a boom.

The Yes Bank plan is risky and there is little doubt that the SBI is acting on government's bidding. But given the uncertain investor support in a gloomy economy, the success of this restructuring exercise in not guaranteed.

The production setback triggered by the coronavirus epidemic in China will soon be fed by countries turning propagators. Prospects of deep recession now seem daunting as the fragility of neo-liberalism is revealed.

The Indian economy is sliding into a serious state of stagnation. Suppressed by industrial repression and a world economy at the dead-end of neo-liberalization, the economy desperately requires a powerful fiscal intervention to be revived.

The recent Supreme Court's judgement has recharged the virtual currency eco-system in India. The power of the RBI to supercede this judgement by banning VCs may not pass the test of proportionality.

The term "populism" which was used by the Left to refer to a perspective that saw the "people" as undifferentiated in class terms, has been transformed. It now is used as a concept that underplays the viciousness of Right-wing supremacism.

The Budget speech includes measures that could fundamentally transform of India's state-regulated financial sector. With the government clearly keen on washing its hands of the mess in the public banking system, privatization could be the end result.

Over-production under capitalism occurs because of speculative investments and the multiplier effect that follows. As both these factors are eliminated under socialism, Soviet Union, with all its defects, never experienced unemployment.

This survey was about wealth and entrepreneurship and free markets and privatisation, not about poverty or inequality or public employment schemes.

Reliance industries has achieved success through a combination of aggressive investments, predatory pricing and consolidations. Government policies favouring its interests ensures that it holds out well even as the economy is in crisis.

Fascist regimes are based on solid support of monopoly capital and the contradictions within it. It is no surprise that even in the midst of crisis, Modi government’s only concern is corporate gains through massive tax cuts.

"The government's fiscal policy must be blamed for India's worsening wealth inequality. With a substantial reduction in taxes on the rich, more investment by capitalists has been accompanied by an increase in their wealth."

Since the building of a democratic society requires keeping wealth inequalities in check, the need for substantial inheritance taxes cannot be denied even by bourgeois theory. Lack of any such provision only signifies the bad faith of our governments.

Indian start-ups today are teeming with $ billion firms with no profits to show. As questions are being posed about OYO’s strategy, accelerating expansion has not delivered. So long as liquid financial capital is in free flow, the OYO spiral may keep unfolding.

Capitalists' opposition to State intervention arises not because of any valid economic reasons but because of their "class instinct". Programmes such as Jeremy Corbyn is putting forward would undermine the social legitimacy of capitalism.

Unemployment and food shortage that plague the neo-liberal economies of today are indeed effects of a demand-constrained system. Essentially characterised by underutilized capacity, capitalism can never have a shortage of finance, which is artificially imposed by international finance capital.

Instead of compensating for falling private demand, the government is cutting taxes and zealously sticking to its fiscal deficit target. This is proving to be a recipe for disaster, further shrinking public spending and slowing down already sluggish growth.

The current inflation does not indicate excessive demand; rather it is caused by decline in output of several commodities relative to shrinking purchasing power. Reducing aggregate demand will only worsen growth-slowdown without affecting inflation in any way.

In their recent working paper, Arvind Subramanian and Josh Felman correctly recognise the growth slowdown afflicting the Indian economy, but fail to see it as the result of a deep structural crisis worsened by neoliberal reform that constrains demand.

As the economy slows down, the Modi government would rather squeeze the state and cut welfare expenditure directed towards the poor than stand up to finance capital under a neo-liberal regime.

To develop 'organic intellectuals" of a free India, higher education needs to be made completely free. But unless the tendency to appease the rich in the name of growth and to commoditise education are overcome, this seems like a distant dream.

Data from the recent survey show that health insurance coverage in India has not expanded at all between 2014 and 2018. Moreover, the benefits of health insurance disproportionately accrue to relatively richer households while the poor are left high and dry.

As prospects of the collapse of the WTO Appellate Board draws near, "emerging markets" like India cannot take even the current level of "free" trade for granted. They must rethink the open-door policy, especially the free flow of finance.

Recently released NSS data and administrative data on LPG connections show that most LPG connections provided under the PMUY may not have reached intended beneficiaries. Survey data confirms that half of the rural households continue to use firewood, chips, crop residue and dung cakes as the main fuel.

The NSS Report No 584, based on the 76th Round survey, calls the bluff peddled by the government on the achievements of Swachh Bharat Mission. In 2018, when the government was claiming that only 1.7 per cent rural households did not have latrines, the survey shows that it as many as 28.7 per cent.

As an aftermath to Moodys' decision of downgrading India's credit rating, the government's obsession with fiscal consolidation may see it curtailing expenditure further. If that transpires the descent into recession could be sharper.

Leaked data showing a drop in per capita consumer expenditure confirms the massive downturn in the Indian economy. The suppression of such valuable survey data on unjustified grounds of "poor data quality" shows the governments' megalomania.

Support for a free trade agreement which creates unemployment, or lower incomes for the peasantry, cannot be justified under any circumstance. Prabhat Patnaik argues that people were right demanding that the government should come out of the RCEP.

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, which include an imperative to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." Yet, in the last four years, matters have deteriorated significantly.

"The Supreme Court verdict on the definition of Annual Gross Revenue can prove devastating for telecom operators. Given the possibility of debt default, if the government turns soft, the result of neoliberal reforms would be the provision of subsidies to private firms to keep them in operation."

Signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership would increase destitution and unemployment and also widen the current account deficit, worsening the coming recession.

Financial flow has shrunk drastically in recent months, affecting the real economy in multiple ways. But the problem is systemic, arising from investment decisions driven by the euphoria of neoliberal reform that proved to be wrong. Minor measures to increase credit flow may not be the solution.

As India's ICT import dependence on China grows, it must ensure that the RCEP architecture does not undermine the capital-intensive efforts of indigenous manufacturers in high technology industries.

"Global Hunger Index 2019 unambiguously concludes that India ranks lowest among all South Asian countries and that there has been an alarming increase in child "wasting". The government's callous approach to this has its roots in the institutionalized inequality of the Indian caste system."

RBI's "clarification" that depositors should not succumb to rumours of impending bank failures is overly optimistic, suggesting that the PMCB crisis is an outlier. In fact, the current precarious situation has deeper roots in the neoliberal transformation of public banking since the 1990s, creating an environment that breeds delinquency and fraud.

Lowering interest rates to revive economic activity has been ineffective, because the global slowdown since 2008 is not the result of "dented animal spirits" of capitalists, but the contractionary and inequalizing tendencies of neoliberal capitalism.

The sudden and steep rise in the repo rate signals a major liquidity crunch in the US money market, and even urgent action by the US Fed to bring rates down might not be able to prevent an economic recession.

"ICRICT's proposal of unitary taxation on MNCs would not only ensure that multinational companies pay their fair share of taxes but also help the Indian government tackle declining tax revenues without adopting regressive tax measures."

The Modi government's "fiscal stimulus" in the form of corporate tax cut is likely to aggravate the economic crisis. What needs to be done is the opposite: an increase in government welfare expenditure financed by taxing the rich.

The Modi government's "stimulus" measure in the form of corporate tax concessions will aggravate the slowdown instead of overcoming it and worsen in India.

Staying out of the RCEP is the best option for India. While damaging for some sectors, the terms would preclude measures required to raise India's export competitiveness.