The Times of India

The stock markets think the government might abolish the dividend distribution tax (DDT) and let all dividends be taxed as plain additional income. Right now DDT plus cess and surcharge is around 20%. People earning dividends above Rs 10 lakh […]

Dear Abhijit Banerjee, Congrats on winning the Nobel Prize. In a recent interview, you castigated economic journalists like me for ignoring economic evidence and lauding the recent cut in corporate tax rates. To combat inequality, you want to soak the

All Indians are delighted that Abhijit Banerjee, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer, has won the Nobel Prize for Economics for creating a new field of experimental economics — randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Drug authorities in all countries insist

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year old Swedish girl who lectured the United Nations on climate change, is being touted as a possible Nobel Prize winner. She believes she and her white Swedish teenage friends have to save the world from us

When private sector banks were allowed to open in the 1990s, some economists thought big industrialists were the obvious candidates. But businesses are potential borrowers, and so should not control lending institutions: that creates an obvious conflict of interest. I

On August 28, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson prorogued Parliament to thwart his opponents from stopping a no-deal exit from the European Community. Outraged critics immediately petitioned the courts. On September 5, a London divisional court heard the case in

The government is spinelessly hypocritical in banning the use of e-cigarettes, popularly called vaping because it entails inhaling nicotine-infused vapour from a heated liquid cartridge. Vaping has existed for only a decade, so long-term studies of its health effects are

The Modi government recently amended the Motor Vehicles Act, sharply increasing (up to 10 times) penalties for traffic offences to try and halve deaths and injuries from road accidents by 2020. India has among the worst road accident records in

Gloom surrounds the end of the decade of the 2010s. The euphoria of the 2000s has been replaced by sulky disappointment as the 2010s end. This is not just a cyclical downswing. Something deeper has gone seriously wrong. In the

India’s GDP growth slowed to 5% in the April-June quarter, the slowest since the scam-hit days of UPA-2. From 8.2% a year ago, growth has fallen sharply quarter after quarter. This is the combined effect of a cyclical global downswing