economic policy & Labour

Unprecedented Inequality in the ‘Billionaire Raj’

IT is the time when Instagram feeds will be flooded with photos and reels of the mega fortnight marriage event of the Ambanis and the eye balls of average Indians would be rolling to follow the spectacle of wealth, offering glaring evidence of the billionaire raj that India could produce at the end of three decades of neoliberal reforms. According to the latest study of the World Inequality Lab, India’s inequality levels have reached unprecedented levels, highest ever since 1922.

Profit-Investment Gap in the Corporate Sector

PRIVATE corporate sector in India seems to have recorded historically high rates of profits during the post-Covid three years. The average net profit in a quarter suffered a steep decline during the successive quarters ending on March and June 2020 but since the quarter ending September 2020, the net profits of corporate sector recovered by about seven times compared to the pandemic period and touched a record level in the recent period.In spite of high rates of income growth and increased share of profit within income, investment growth didn’t show adequate response.

Services and Capital Accumulation

COMMODIFICATION of services is one of the major avenues of expanding the realm of capital in the neoliberal age. Commodity for Marx has no reference to corporeal reality. Something which is produced for sale whether it is goods or services does not make a conceptual difference in Marx’s notion of commodity. For Marx, commodity is a social relationship independent of its physical nature. The expansion of services in the count of GDP is partly because of commodification of services which were earlier supplied from a community or collectively owned pool.

Marx: Humans ‘In and Against’ Nature

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable GingerRephraseRephrase with Ginger (Ctrl+Alt+E)USE values are created by labour and nature. But capital relations attach value to products that are being produced for the purpose of creating surplus. Production in capitalism is production of surplus value and this involves a process of appropriating labour and nature.

Hard Facts Stare at the Rulers

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceHARD facts are staring at the government creating discomforts to the party in power. It is sad to see on the eve of election how the prime minister of India feels uncomfortable, perturbed and baffled in facing these hard realities.

Electoral Bonds and the Political Economy of Extortion

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceINDIA is one among her peers recording a very low tax-GDP ratio, and the effective tax rate for the corporates have been sometimes lower than the income tax rates applicable to middle class income slabs. This low tax regime is a key mandate of neoliberalism as it is committed to unshackle corporate capital from the marred regulations that are meant to mobilise resources for subsidising the poor.

Demographic Disaster and Rising Dependent Youth

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceACCORDING to official sources, India’s unemployment rate in the past five years turned out to be one of the highest in the post-independence period. For decades before the current regime the average open unemployment rate used to be within the range of 2-3 per cent.

Privatisation Augments Share of Non-Food expenditure

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceTHE ministry of statistics and programme implementation has recently released the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted during August 2022 to July 2023. Household consumption surveys earlier were conducted every five years but the last HCES was conducted in 2011-12.

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