Category Center for the Study for Finance and Economics

Doubling of Income, Really?

INDIA’S per capita income, representing the average income of an Indian citizen, has risen from INR 79,000 in 2013–14 to INR 1,71,000 in 2022–23 — an increase of 116 percent. Therefore, some claim that incomes have more than doubled in India since the present ruling dispensation took office. The catch is that: a) this includes the price increase during the period and hence does not represent the real increase in incomes, and b) the data for 2022–23 and two earlier years is provisional and subject to revision.

Reimagining Public Policy in the Context of Emerging Global and Domestic Trends

It is a privilege to deliver the inaugural address for the Conference on Public policy Research, Pedagogy, and practice organized by the Delhi School of Public Policy and the Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi. In any discipline, particularly in the social sciences and in professional programs, research, pedagogy, and practice need to be tailored to the emerging context and challenges which the discipline needs to help understand and address. The title of my address has the terms “Reimagining Public Policy”. It also stresses “Emerging Global and Domestic Trends”.

Good and Services Tax (GST) Collection: India’s progress towards ‘One Nation, One Sales Tax’

The progress of India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST), based on taxing value-addition, introduced as a dual tax levied by both the centre and the states, in a short period since 2017 when it was introduced, has been commendable. The GST has helped India progress towards the vision of ‘one nation, one sales tax’; and has helped reduce transaction costs of businesses at all levels, while facilitating lower logistics costs toward greater global competitiveness.  To implement GST, a Constitutional amendment was needed as in the then-existing Constitution, there was no provision for levying sales tax on goods by the Union government, and the states could not levy sales tax on services.

New India’s Economic Transformation and Union Budget 2023-24

The IMPRI Center for the Study of Finance and Economics (CSFE), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi hosted an interactive panel discussion on the topic ‘New India’s Economic Transformation and Union Budget 2023-24’ on 6 February 2023, under the IMPRI 3rd Annual Series of Thematic Deliberations and Analysis of Union Budget 2023-24, as part of IMPRI #WebPolicyTalk.

The Other ‘Fund Crunch’: How India’s Political Funding limits Inc’s Global Opportunities

If Indian companies are to go global, find global partners accountable to their shareholders and laws that call for clean operations that are at least noiseless, if not quite squeaky and receive inexpensive capital from abroad, Indian politics has to clean itself up.

While we are all proud of India's democracy, few of us bother to fund any political party. We are content to let parties fund themselves by mobilising funds as they traditionally have from the time of the freedom struggle when industrialists like G D Birla used to fund the Congress. But most such funding was informal, with no structured, transparent disclosure of who funded which party and to what extent.

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