Swaminomics

GDP growth in the January-March quarter slumped to 5.3%, the lowest for nine years. The quarterly debacle dragged down annual GDP growth to 6.5% in 2011-12, lower even than the 6.9% achieved in the great recession year of 2008-09. Sundry businessmen have urged the government to come out with a revival package. Sorry, but the More >

While discussing higher petrol prices, TV anchor Arnab Goswami asked why the middle class shouldn’t get a big petrol subsidy when corporations got tax breaks of Rs 529,000 crore. He got this huge figure from an annual budget document calculating “revenue foregone” through various tax exemptions and exceptions. The left has long decried this “revenue More >

Will the crash of the rupee to a record low of Rs 54.68 per dollar be a “kick in the pants”, to quote economist Arvind Subramanian, that finally forces the government to slash unwarranted subsidies and deepen reforms? Hopefully yes. But Rohini Malkani of Citibank says, after a US visit, that foreign investors view the More >

The future of the Eurozone (comprising 17 European countries using the euro as their currency) is in doubt after voters in Greece and France threw out incumbents struggling to save the euro through supposed austerity measures. Socialist leader Francois Hollande won in France by promising economic growth, not austerity. In Greece, the top two parties More >

Socialists like health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad won’t admit it, but they rather liked the Berlin Wall. They think it’s morally right to keep citizens captive at home, unable to migrate for better prospects. Azad has proposed not a brick wall but a financial one: he wants all doctors going to the US for higher More >

Policy paralysis has costs. Standard and Poor’s has cut India’s credit outlook to negative and warned of a one-in-three chance of a downgrade to junk status within the next 24 months. S&P cites the slowing economy, deteriorating balance of payments and out-of-control fiscal deficits. India’s problems are eminently solvable. But the government is so lacking More >

India has just a 50% chance of becoming a breakout nation (exceeding expectations of 7% GDP growth) in coming years. So says Morgan Stanley honcho Ruchir Sharma in a fascinating new book, Breakout Nations. There is no better book for country-by-country accounts of emerging markets (and riskier ones called frontier markets). Its strong point is More >

Most political parties and media have passionately supported the Supreme Court ruling in the 2G spectrum case, that the government should auction natural resources and not allot them or allow unregulated extraction (as in iron ore mining). The Comptroller and Auditor General has fuelled this public passion by estimating huge losses to the exchequer through More >

The comptroller and auditor general has estimated that the government lost Rs 10.7 lakh crore by allotting coal blocks in 2004-09 instead of auctioning them. The government has contested the estimate as well as methodology of the CAG, and says allocations were normal practice for decades. The CAG has admitted that its estimate is very More >