The Economic Times

Indian industrialists are terrified of competing with China. But fears are also evident in the once-miracle economies of south-east Asia. East Asian countries like Korea and Taiwan have long graduated out of labour-intensive goods into high-tech ones, and do not […]

ONE reason why Vijay Kelkar’s reports on tax reform have encountered so much opposition from so many lobbies is that Kelkar has approached taxation as an economist, not a politician. Since he is an economist, I have no quarrel with

HOW dependent is prosperity on economic freedom? The Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal compile annually an Economic Freedom Index. This is based on 50 different economic variables grouped into 10 categories — banking and finance, capital flows and foreign

Have Indian interest rates finally become globally competitive? I have long held that real interest rates in India are too high for a sustainable investment boom. This is the predictable consequence of crowding out by huge fiscal deficits. The Bombay

For the first time, India is well-placed to catch the current global boom in wheat prices. At a time when India’s granaries are full to bursting, bad weather has ravaged wheat crops across the world and sent prices soaring. In

Fears of a double-dip global recession have depressed bourses the world over, inducing a flight to treasury bonds. Economists (and indeed The Economist) are singing gloomy jeremiads. Double-dip recessions are rare. Why then are markets expecting it? Mainly because the

Darks clouds are gathering on the financial horizon. The world economy is slowing, and may suffer a double-dip recession. Stock markets are plunging in India and the world over. Privatisation of HPCL and BPCL looks  off the agenda. Standard and

Readers are familiar with the concept of jobless growth. But India is now demonstrating a less familiar phenomenon, which, for want of a better phrase, can be called industryless growth. This was unsurprising last year, when the global recession forced

Most developing countries are both integrating with the world economy and devolving power to local governments and communities. This combination of globalisation and localisation is best called glocalisation. The centralised nation-state is giving way to both supra-national and sub-national institutions.

How should we tax agricultural income? The Constitution allocates this function to state governments, which generally levy nothing on farmers, though many levy hefty rates of tax on plantations. There is a tax on land, called land revenue. But competition