Swaminomics

Globally, a country is called a miracle economy if it attains 7% GDP growth. The latest member of the 7% growth club is, surprisingly, Uttar Pradesh. This should matter in the coming state election. UP has long been regarded as incurably feudal, caste-bound and incapable of fast growth. With a population of 200 million, it More >

Everybody fights over nobody’s Bill. That headline sums up the fiasco over the Lokpal Bill. In outraged tones, the Congress accuses the BJP of sabotaging both the Constitutional amendment in the Lok Sabha and the Lokpal Bill in the Rajya Sabha. The BJP expresses equal outrage at the Congress’ ‘phoney’ bill seeking a powerless Lokpal. More >

Anna Hazare has threatened a fast and “fill jails” movement to persuade Parliament to place the Central Bureau of Investigation under the new anti-corruption Lokpal. He says a Lokpal without an investigative wing is toothless. The government replies that the anti-corruption branch of the CBI can be supervised by the Lokpal in cases referred to More >

The rupee has crashed from Rs 45 to Rs 54 to the dollar, before recovering slightly to Rs 52.80 on Friday. Dismayed corporations and politicians want the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to intervene in currency markets and prop up the rupee. This would be a terrible mistake. The rupee’s fall is not a technical More >

Faced with opposition from its own allies like Mamata Banerjee, the government has shelved its proposal to allow Walmart and other multibrand foreign retailers to have majority stakes in Indian hypermarkets. Critics have accepted the bogus claim that foreign retailers will kill small Indian shopkeepers. In fact, the Walmart model is a 20th century concept More >

Last week, 50 million shopkeepers and traders staged a bandh against the government decision to allow 51% foreign investment in multi-brand retail chains. What this actually proved was the hollowness of the claim of small shopkeepers to be weak underlings representing the unorganized sector. The 50 million traders on strike exceeded India’s entire organized labour More >

Karl Marx believed that workers created all true value in corporations, and so corporate profits amounted to employee deprivation. He saw that capital was required as an input, but felt that true value was created by employees, not capitalist owners. In capitalist economies, you might think it’s impossible for employees to hog all the cash More >

Kingfisher Airlines is deep in the red. Should the government organize its rescue? Critics say that it has already been rescued in the past thanks to Vijay Mallya’s political clout, yet it has never made a profit since inception. When millions of small businesses are allowed to go bust when banks cut off credit to More >

Elite journals like Economic and Political Weekly are full of articles describing Indian economic policy as neo-liberal. This might lead readers to think that India has become a haven of economic freedom, a business paradise. Anybody who has actually tried to start and run a business will tell you this is a pack of lies, More >

The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by the year-end will probably be followed by a much bigger US withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. Policy analysts have long assumed that the US must have a dominant military presence in the Gulf to secure its oil supplies. But new technologies and oil discoveries suggest that by More >