Tag: Economics

March 31, 2020 /

There is lock down and then there is locking down the economy and the two are not the same! This is my attempt to explain the connections between the two.
Lockdown is an extreme form of social distancing – everyone stays at home and therefore is automatically not proximal to the others. The corollary is that by successfully doing so you bring the whole country and therefore the economy to a halt! The goal of this exercise as epidemiologists and other medical professionals will explain is to “flatten the curve.” And this in some ways is the first thing to notice: the name is really about flattening the curve and not eliminating the curve.

February 10, 2018 /

Cheerleading “economics” year after year, we have ended up creating an unequal country which has few parallels. About a third of the fruits of economic growth experienced since 1980 has gone to the richest 1% of the country. Hardly any other country has seen such yawning gap between the rich and the rest. The degree of inequality has been growing. In the beginning of this century the top 10% of the population cornered 40% of the income. By 2014 their share rose to 50%.

June 15, 2017 /

Results are in on Demonetisation … India is being ruled by AN INCOMPETENT PRIME MINISTER… He has ruined the Indian economy with a stupid, ill-considered move. An overweening belief in himself, to the exclusion of advice from even a close set of real economic/financial experts, is undoubtedly the biggest cause of this debacle. If Modi had even consulted those with some economic/financial knowledge in his own party, he would have realized that demonetization is a blatantly STUPID move.

November 18, 2016 /

We are a country of melodrama, fantastic mythology, grandiose narratives – this is the common thread that binds us all, for better or for worse. We thrive and revel in conflating relatively minor matters into something important and meaningful, and have a disdain for things that are not dramatic, grand or aspirational, even if critically important.

April 14, 2016 /

Dr. Ambedkar took on and eventually won in two very important debates against two of the greatest economists the world has seen, a feat that cannot be equalled by any economist of India past or present. The more one reads Ambedkar the more one is left amazed at the giant nature of his intellectual prowess. Especially since he was not just an armchair intellectual but a social crusader who fought for justice for the oppressed.

April 9, 2016 /

The inclusive democracy of one adult one vote in a poor (wo)man’s democracy is reconciled with economic power of corporations by price rationing out of the poor from any possibility of direct representation. Its result is a homogeneous mass consisting of many political parties with different colours. They are different in their rhetoric when in opposition, but same in action when in power. Choice is closed through the institution of democracy and the ideology of equating higher growth with development.