Terms of Trade | Redistribution is dead, long live redistribution!
1 year, 1 month ago

Terms of Trade | Redistribution is dead, long live redistribution!

Hindustan Times  

Two key political announcements made headlines that point to the deeper political economy crisis. Under the National Food Security Act, almost two-thirds of India’s population is entitled to receive either 35 kg food grains per household or 5 kg per household per person at the issue price of ₹3/2/1 per kg. Even when such equality existed, in-built caste networks in workplaces — public and private — made discrimination a way of life in India’s labour market. As long as this does not change, India’s political economy will continue to live up to the farce of pretending to practise economic redistribution without hurting those who stand to really lose from a redistribution in the real sense of the term. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.

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History of this topic

Terms of Trade | India needs to move beyond the formalisation and welfare narratives
5 months, 2 weeks ago

Terms of Trade | India needs to move beyond the formalisation and welfare narratives

Hindustan Times  

Since demonetisation in November 2016, the current government has been consciously following a policy of pushing formalisation in the Indian economy. In terms of share in overall GVA excluding agriculture and construction, the share of informal sector enterprises has gone down from 12% to 8.2% between 2015-16 and 2022-23. While there are no clear-cut estimates for the sector-wise break-up of …

Terms of Trade | The Opposition must revisit its economic approach if it wants to change the future
9 months, 2 weeks ago

Terms of Trade | The Opposition must revisit its economic approach if it wants to change the future

Hindustan Times  

This edition of Terms of Trade is perhaps the last one before the Election Commission of India announces the schedule for the 2024 general elections. While the BJP did face political headwinds in the immediate aftermath of its landslide 2014 victory after big defeats in the 2015 Delhi and Bihar assembly elections, it managed to regain the narrative after winning …

Terms of Trade | Will HCES findings change politics in India?
9 months, 3 weeks ago

Terms of Trade | Will HCES findings change politics in India?

Hindustan Times  

When the government publishes the data for the 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, India will see a big debate on consumption levels, inequality and poverty. From the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the National Food Security Act under the United Progressive Alliance era to the Narendra Modi government significantly expanding the scope of asset transfer programmes such as …

Terms of Trade | Is ‘Bharat’ the new Davos?
10 months, 2 weeks ago

Terms of Trade | Is ‘Bharat’ the new Davos?

Hindustan Times  

The last budget of the second Narendra Modi government and now a White Paper on the state of the economy strike a very unusual political economy note. India’s trajectory towards a neoliberal economy which is programmatically wedded to the idea of fiscal conservatism and unregulated markets has been completed while negotiating political roadblocks on the way. These three factors, when …

Terms of Trade | Move over socialism, the joke’s on liberalism now
10 months, 4 weeks ago

Terms of Trade | Move over socialism, the joke’s on liberalism now

Hindustan Times  

When the Communist Party of India met in its second party congress in 1948, its 44-year-old secretary Bhalchandra Trimbak Ranadive came up with the famous line of “ Yeh aazadi jhoothi hai, desh ki janata bhookhi hai ”. The economic model after Independence BTR’s post-facto realisation of the global revolution having run its course before it could reach India would …

Terms of Trade | Why is the BJP immune from the anger of a K-shaped economic recovery?
11 months, 1 week ago

Terms of Trade | Why is the BJP immune from the anger of a K-shaped economic recovery?

Hindustan Times  

The first advance estimates released by the National Statistical Office expect the Indian economy to grow at 7.3% in 2023-24. Global growth rankings aside, what does this number actually mean as far as India’s political economy is concerned? Anybody who has been following India’s political economy in the past decade will agree that all three are true in some way. …

Terms of Trade | Why Congress's trollification is bad for its political prospects
1 year, 3 months ago

Terms of Trade | Why Congress's trollification is bad for its political prospects

Hindustan Times  

This week’s column will succumb to the temptation of beginning with a personal anecdote. The behaviour is also symptomatic of the ideological disarming of the Opposition, which has given Narendra Modi and the BJP a walkover on its claims of preserving and strengthening India’s national interest. To be sure, one could always turn back and ask whether the Congress adopting …

Terms of Trade | Nuanced economic debates will not matter in 2024
1 year, 6 months ago

Terms of Trade | Nuanced economic debates will not matter in 2024

Hindustan Times  

With the celebrations of the ninth anniversary of the Narendra Modi government, the countdown to the 2024 general elections has started. Urban unemployment rate fell to its lowest – the earliest data we have is for the quarter ending June 2018 – in the Periodic Labour Force Survey round for the quarter ending March 2023. To cut a long story …

Terms of Trade | What ails competitive capitalism in India
1 year, 8 months ago

Terms of Trade | What ails competitive capitalism in India

Hindustan Times  

In a paper which is likely to create a big debate in India, New York University professor and former deputy governor of the RBI, Viral Acharya has argued that India needs to do five things to exploit its true economic potential. What this week’s column intends to do is take Acharya’s claims at face value and situate them in India’s …

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