The Economic Survey said rightly that no country had ever grown fast without buoyant exports, and called for policies to generate a virtuous cycle of rising exports, GDP, savings and investment. The budget fails comprehensively to do this. Far from […]

Draft amendments to the Indian Forest Act have been circulated for comment, and provoked much controversy. The ministry of environment proposes enhanced powers for the police and bureaucrats in dealing with forest tribals to improve forest cover. In 2015, the

The Prime Minister held a meeting with other party leaders last Wednesday to promote his longstanding idea of simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. Many Opposition leaders are bitterly opposed to this and boycotted the meeting. They

Arvind Subramanian, former Chief Economic Advisor, says in a sensational newspaper column that India’s GDP growth rate since 2011 has been only 4.5%, far short of the official 7%. Sorry, this is too bad to be true. Many economists have

Why did Congress fare so badly in the General Election? One reason is that it devised catchy slogans that made media headlines but didn’t translate into votes since they were not grounded in reality. The best example is Rahul Gandhi’s

Annual GDP growth fell from 6.9% in 2017-18 to 6.8% in 2018-19. Worse, GDP in the latest January-March 2019 quarter slowed to just 5.8%. Yet Narendra Modi swept the general election. The BJP’s national vote share rose from 31.3% to

Narendra Modi won the 2014 election with the slogan, “minimum government, maximum governance.” In practice, government intervention in the economy often increased and governance often worsened. Having won a landslide, Modi should return to his old slogan and make “minimum