Changes in global natural gas trade have reflected geopolitical alignments but these may shift, depending on policies of incoming US President Donald Trump.

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.

A persistent rise in the volume and share of lending to the retail sector could lead to vulnerability in a banking system that only recently overcame its bad loan problem.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

China's transformation, from being the manufacturing hub of the world to being a global hub for R&D and innovation, poses a challenge that attracts adverse attention from the rest of the world.

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 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.

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.

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.

The slowdown in registered manufacturing draws attention to the structural crisis afflicting the Indian economy, which is both generalised and deep.

"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."

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.

Prabhat Patnaik argues that industrial recession in India is inevitable under neo-liberalism - and it is likely to worsen because neoliberalism makes finding resources for fiscal expansion difficult.

The stagnation of employment in developed countries and apparent recovery in developing countries after the Great Recession of 2008-09 have renewed perceptions of a global shift in employment to the developing world, particularly in manufacturing activities. This article uses the most recent available ILO data to examine the extent to which such a shift is actually occurring.

The recent deceleration in month-on-month IIP growth rates has given the government cause for concern. One possible argument that explains the medium term industrial growth trends is that the process of unwinding of the fiscal stimulus was not accompanied by any neutralising surge in debt-financed private investment and consumption. However, it is too early to conclude with confidence that this is what is happening.

India is doing away with specialised development banking institutions on the grounds that equity and bond markets would finance industrial development. This is bound to lead to a shortfall in finance for long-term investments, especially for medium and small enterprises. The experience of countries such as Brazil, which has thus far not opted for this trajectory, may be educative.

There has been much media celebration about the recent signing of the Japan-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. This article examines some of the features of the agreement and considers their implications for domestic economic strategies and processes in India.

The mining sector is increasingly seen as one in which the worst features of capitalism as a profit machine combine with illegality and corruption to provide a site for primitive accumulation based on plunder and unequal exchange.

The ambivalence in government position in the long-drawn out conflict between RIL and RNRL, on the issue of the pricing of gas, reflects the changed relationship between the state and private capital in India ever since ''reform'' began. In the new world order the state works to rescue and strengthen private capital, even while it declares that the rest of society including the poor and the marginalised have to learn to deal with a world of market mediated relationships.

With the expensive acquisitions of Anglo-Dutch steel major Corus and luxury automobile brands Jaguar and Land Rover in quick succession on the eve of the global financial crisis, the TATA group faced difficulties as the debt level of both the parent and the UK subsidiaries in the group was on a rise. However, it is noteworthy how the TATA group has escaped a group-wide crisis by leveraging its brand, the Indian government and the Indian public.

Current economic problems in the Indian economy are being presented by the government as created entirely by the direct and indirect effects of the global financial crisis. Even the industrial slowdown is being blamed on the adverse impact of the global slowdown upon manufacturing exports. However, the official data suggest that the industrial slowdown began well before the effects of the external crisis began to be felt in India.

Some observers are of the view that the sharp fall in the month-on-month annual rate of industrial growth in August 2008 exaggerates the actual and likely slow down in industrial growth. This article discusses why the broad trend suggested by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) may not be too far off the mark.

A much discussed aspect of post-reform industrial performance is the stagnation of employment in the organised manufacturing sector, despite high rates of output growth. The authors examine this performance and relate this to the composition of growth in the registered manufacturing sector, and suggest that demand-side factors may have an important explanatory role.