-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,...

-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...

-Scroll.in The Centre said that 648 disclosures about foreign assets worth Rs 4,164 crore were made during a one-time compliance window in September 2015. There is no official estimate on the amount of black money stashed in foreign accounts for last five years, the Union government told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary made the statement in a written reply to a question by Samajwadi Party MPs...

-Hindustan Times While demonetisation was subsequently described as a policy boost to promoting digital payments, the original policy had very different stated targets. November 8, 2021 marks five years of demonetisation in India. On this day in 2016, in a televised address at 8 pm, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that currency notes of ₹500 and ₹1000 -- these two denominations were 86% of the currency in circulation at the time in...

One is almost certain to hear this from an economist that if something is available at free of cost or at a subsidised rate thanks to government intervention, then people tend to overuse or overconsume such goods/ commodities. So, the best solution is to create a market for such 'almost freely available' or 'highly subsidised' goods or commodities. Once people start paying to use or consume such goods/ commodities, they...