Category Center for the Study for Finance and Economics

The upcoming budget, the government’s priority should be not just the lowering of the rate of inflation but steadying the prices of essential items that the poor consume.

This marginalization of the rural economy is a result of the policymakers’ focus being on the organized part — the modern part of the economy. Modernization of the economy has been taken to be the copying of western modernity. India has not attempted its own modernity suited to the needs of the vast majority living in rural areas. No wonder the agriculture sector which provides the most important item of consumption — food — has been marginalized.

Market-distorting fertilizer/power subsidies must go.

A flawed process led to erroneous policy which is counterproductive and which resulted in not only damage to democracy but to huge adverse impact on the public, especially the poor. The process by which a policy is arrived at, also determines the outcomes. Can it then be said that the process was legal, even if formally, so the achievement of the objectives does not matter? The Supreme Court’s majority judgment on demonetization is based primarily on the premise that demonetization had a `reasonable nexus’ with the objectives sought to be achieved.

Nilanjan Banik 2022 was a good ‘growth’ year for India. India’s economy was among the fastest growing large economies. This was commendable, especially in a year marred by war and extreme climate events, rising commodity and energy prices, tightening global…