Soaring Oil Price and Imminent Stagflation

ECONOMIC indicators once again are flashing worrying signals. The unemployment rate in India at the moment is above 8 per cent, the consumer price index (combined) taken as a measure of headline inflation is above 6 per cent and the wholesale price index showing year-on-year growth is close to 13 per cent as of January 2022.

Cruel Joke of Declining Informality

RECENTLY, a weird claim has been advanced by certain quarters within policy circles that informality in India has declined, the share of the informal sector in output and employment has gone down, and that’s an achievement to be celebrated for obvious reasons.

Rising Exploitation amidst ‘Humanitarian Crises’

ONCE again it is clear by emerging trends in employment, that wages and returns to labour and the conditions of employment are determined in capitalism not by any moral judgment of nutritional necessity or by any universal norm derived from a metaphysical notion of ‘humanity’, but purely conditioned by the relative bargaining power of contesting classes.The current pandemic has an extensive impact on human life at large with the virus mutating continuously and infecting human bodies escaping the shields of various preventive measures including vaccines.

Budget 2022-23: Missed Opportunity for a Speedy Recovery

SHAKY GROWTH ESTIMATESTHE pretext of the budget 2022-23 is an economic scenario that seems to be slowly returning back to normalcy from the wounds of the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted business as usual for more than a year causing huge income and job loss for the vast majority of the people. From a contraction of 7.3 per cent in the previous financial year, the economy records a positive growth of 9.2 per cent in the current year (2021-2022) as estimated by the National Statistical Office in its first advance estimates.

World Inequality Report: Class Divide Explains More than Regional Divisions

WORLD Inequality Report 2022 underlines the sharp divide between the rich and the poor that occurred as a result of neoliberal policies pursued by global capital using the hegemonic and asymmetric architecture of global institutions. The report clearly shows how the class divide has become relatively more important than the regional divide in determining global inequality. This simply tells that in today’s world where one is born and brought up has relatively less impact than in which class the person belongs to in explaining relative earnings and wealth status.

Consumer Sentiments Index: Recovery is not Automatic

THE bi-monthly results released by the Reserve Bank of India of its Consumer Confidence Survey provides some indication of consumers’ perceptions on the current state of the economy as well as of future expectations. The latest round released on 8, December 2021, is based on the survey conducted during the period October 25 to November 3, 2021, covering 5310 households across 13 major states. The survey results provide two summary indicators namely, the current situation index (CSI) and future expectation index (FEI).

Class Divide and the Pandemic

THE pandemic and its consequences manifested in different parts of the world and more importantly its differential impact on classes of people and segments of population reveals deeper chasms and structural divides that capitalism reproduces in its process of accumulation.In the twentieth century since ‘Spanish Flu’ in 1918 we faced two more pandemics namely, the Asian Flu in 1957 and Hong Kong Flu in 1968.

Worrying Trends in Post-Pandemic Employment

SOME of the worrying features of recent employment trends raise doubts about the discourse of post pandemic robust recovery advocated by the government and the political establishment. It is not at all surprising that the economy faced severe contraction during the pandemic and as situations ease off, the economy once again records positive growth in different sectors.

Asset Monetisation: Public Assets for Corporate Profits

THE government of India proposes to recycle publicly owned brownfield capital assets mostly underutilised or with low returns into revenue generating assets controlled by private corporates with a view to fund National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) involving Rs 111 lakh crores stretched over a period of five years. In this connection National Asset Monetisation Pipeline (NAMP) has been announced which sets a target of mobilising roughly Rs 6 lakh crores which however amounts to 14 per cent of Rs 43 lakh crores suggested to be the proposed outlay of central government in the NIP.

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Peoples Democracy

economic policy & Labour