-The Hindu India could be living through a reprise of the ‘Congress system’, but with significant differences in the BJP’s re-enactment At the first signs of stress, the grand vision of a nation unified in a singular system of taxation, was supplanted by a policy of every-state-for-itself. Just over three years ago, the introduction of a unified “goods and services tax” (GST) was heralded by a midnight session of Parliament, a theatrical...

-The Telegraph The slump in the GDP and the pain ahead The -23.9 per cent shrinkage in the April-June GDP is not a surprise as nearly half the period witnessed a national lockdown. It’s also not surprising that this loss is the world’s steepest for India’s lockdown was the most stringent and the accompanying fiscal policy response the weakest. But the quarter per cent slump did surprise most analysts who have since...

-The Indian Express Each of the poverty alleviation programmes seems to have a recurring theme — being funded by the poor themselves. The rodomontade about heralding a new epoch of prosperity six years ago is gradually evaporating. It appears the PM is in the dark about the delivery of his government’s policies, just as the Congress leadership seems clueless about issues on the ground. Four specific pain points unmask the gap between...

-The Hindu Money financing is a viable route to take us back to pre-COVID-19 levels of output Former Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and his Congress party colleague Praveen Chakravarty have, in these pages, written on the appropriate policy response to the currently depressed state of the economy. Given Dr. Singh’s deep understanding of the subject, this is in the nature of invaluable counsel. Unlike the dispensation in power, he and his...

-The Hindu The longer-term decline in the labour participation rate can be attributed to a host of factors The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economies across the world and presented policymakers with the unenviable task of sustaining employment amidst lockdowns. However, the academic and political debates in India on unemployment, which is widely attributed to jobless growth amidst stagnation in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, predate the pandemic. It will be useful to...