-Newsclick.in This unwillingness of finance to stay in, or move to, the Third World, is impairing the ability of several countries to pay for their imports and to service their external debt. There is an exodus of finance from the Third World at present, far exceeding in scale what had occurred in 2008 after the financial crisis. Even more important than the actual outflow is the desire on the part of finance...

-The Telegraph The government and the elite know nothing of the working poor’s problems A very distinguished virologist whom I happen to know believes that the lockdown in India was an overreaction. His argument is that since the coronavirus was coming to India from outside, testing and quarantining people coming from abroad, and those with whom they might have been in contact within the country, should have been quite sufficient to prevent...

-The Hindu The Centre can afford to step up its COVID-19 assistance to a higher scale; fiscal deficit is no worry The three-week long lockdown imposed on the country, it can be argued, was an over-reaction. More widespread testing of possible cases, “social distancing”, self-quarantining by the elderly, and selective lockdown of sensitive areas (as the Chinese government did in Wuhan) might have been quite adequate. But while this can be debated,...

-Newsclick.in With the Centre being both niggardly and thoughtless in the matter of relief following the unplanned lockdown, state governments, which are desperately short of funds, will be left holding the baby. The tragic irony could not have been more complete. The country is under lockdown, but last week thousands of migrant workers were thronging bus stands or marching on the roads, making a mockery of it; the aim of the lockdown...

-Newsclick.in Reviving the economy requires, apart from social peace, a powerful fiscal intervention going well beyond what neo-liberalism allows. Changes in estimation methods have of late made statistics on the Indian economy increasingly bewildering; besides, whenever the statistics show the performance of the economy in a poor light, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government simply suppresses them. Nothing, however, can suppress the fact that the Indian economy is sliding into a serious...