-The Hindu As inflation is driven by supply-side factors, tax policy can be used to cushion its impact With the Union Budget 10 days away, many economic observers are now focused on what support the Centre can offer the economy, which is still struggling to recover from the pandemic. Some analysts believe that the government must keep its spending in check to prevent price rise from getting out of control. Retail inflation...

-Hindustan Times Gross domestic product (GDP) statistics are released at both current and constant prices. The latter discounts inflation (more on this later) from the base year of the current GDP series. Let’s assume it takes a tonne of steel to build half a kilometre of road. Let’s also assume steel costs ₹1,000 a tonne and there is a tax of 10% on steel. Now, if steel prices doubled in a year,...

-The Hindu Business Line At present, panchayats make no contribution to the design of schemes. Their autonomy is negligible. This needs to change Decentralisation has long been recognised as an efficient instrument for promoting economic democracy, and delivering services to meet the needs of people. There are three different channels for decentralisation — political, administrative and fiscal. Political decentralisation promotes trust and cooperation between government agencies and citizens. Administrative decentralisation enables authority...

-TheWire.in The campaign emphasised how the proposed NEP will result in budget cuts, elimination of reservations for the marginalised, fee hikes and a further rise of contractualisation and privatisation in higher education. New Delhi: More than 150 students, teachers and eminent public personalities on December 24 attended a nationwide 50-day campaign against the National Education Policy (NEP) at the Press Club of India (PCI) in the national capital. The PCI conference emphasised how...

-TheWire.in A claim of an 8.4% real GDP growth rate has little relevance even as rural India battles plummeting wage levels, depleted incomes and widespread unemployment. With the release of the GDP figures for the quarter ending September, the government machinery has been in full swing advancing the narrative that economic growth is indeed back on track. However, sorely missing from these narratives is the inconvenient factoid on the currently dismal state of...