Do it yourself

A new central government will assume office in India, in a few days. This is a great opportunity to look at the current state of affairs with a new perspective and reorient the policy framework. The present state of the Indian economy is characterized by the rising incidence of unemployment, disguised unemployment, and underemployment; higher than acceptable socio-economic inequality; strong and rising intellectual and skill inequality; gradually bridging but still high regional imbalances; low productivity especially in the agriculture sector; oversized government with abysmal level of decentralization; incapacitating supply constraints, especially in social and physical infrastructure terms; and trust deficit at all levels. A younger demography provides high potential in terms of growing workforce and consumption demand. However, the potential remains under-exploited due to low skill levels, lack of adequate employment opportunities, financial and social exclusion, and disillusionm...

A   new study   by the World Inequality Lab highlighted one of the most obvious facts, i.e., the income and wealth inequalities in India have been rising and are now worse than the colonial period. The study highlights that “Inequality declined post-independence till the early 1980s, after which it began rising and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s. Trends of top income and wealth shares track each other over the entire period of the study. Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022-23, the top 1% income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels and India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world, higher than even South Africa, Brazil and the US.” The study suggests that “A restructuring of the tax code to account for both income and wealth, and broad-based public investments in health, education and nutrition are needed to enable ...

 It was a sunny afternoon in winters of 1991. I was enjoying coffee at a famous public café in Connaught Place (New Delhi) with couple of my friends. All of us were waiting for our CA Final result, which was to be announced in couple of weeks. My friends were senior to me and were already working, having completed their articleship two years ago. We were discussing the economic changes that were getting unleashed in the country by the new regime that had assumed office a few months ago. The economic changes had not impacted me in any positive manner by then. INR devaluation had led to inflation spike disturbing our household budget. Some of my close relatives who were running micro and small industries (then called SSI) were deeply worried about sustainability of their business as they were now exposed to competition from larger businesses and imports. My cousins had their own set of worries. The implementation of Mandal Commission recommendation was reaffirmed. The competition t...