The Economic Times

If I were Prakash Karat, I would topple the Congress-led UPA government in the monsoon session of Parliament starting in July. Why? Because the Congress faces a terrible election climate right now, which might improve by May 2009, when the […]

Surging food prices and the Karnataka election once again raise the question, how needy and distressed are Indians? Karnataka has been at the very forefront of India’s record GDP growth of almost 9% per year. But critics claim that rapid

Indians are outraged by President Bush\’s claim that rising food consumption in India and China have sent world food prices skyrocketing. When incomes rise, people eat more meat, so more grain is fed to animals. Seven tonnes of grain produce

I greatly respect Raghuram Rajan. He warned in writings and speeches of rising risks in the US financial sector in 2005-07, when all others were singing hosannas to financial innovation. The subsequent financial crisis proved him prescient. Yet I disagree

In 2001, Goldman Sachs came out with the concept of the BRICs – Brazil, Russia, India China – as high-population countries that would dominate the world economy by 2050. At the time, global financiers sneered that this was a facile

How long and hard will the US recession be, and how badly will it affect India? Analysis of that issue has currently been hijacked by the sensational events in the US stock market, mirrored by gyrations in Indian markets. The

This year’s budget is not simply an election budget. It is also an anti-recession budget. It seeks explicitly to stimulate the domestic economy in the face of the coming global slowdown. Yet the exercise will have at best very partial

For a short but incisive economic history of India since Independence, you should read the first hundred pages of Arvind Panagariya’s new book (India: The Emerging Giant, OUP). He follows this up with an excellent discussion of key contemporary problems,

TNN I was taught in college that market failure is so common that governments must intervene with regulations to protect the public. Actually, regulations are required even when there is no market failure. Competition needs to take place within a

NEW DELHI: It should be an election budget. So, expect higher exemption limits for income tax, cuts in corporate tax and customs duty, selective cuts in excise duty, and big spending on welfare and social schemes in the coming budget.