The Prospect of Food Shortage

ORTHODOX economics has for long been haunted by the prospect that the growth in foodgrains output in the world economy would not be sufficiently high to sustain the growing population of the world. Malthus was an early exponent of this fear. Keynes too subscribed to the view that unless the poor countries somehow ensured that their population growth was controlled, there would be a food shortage in the world economy, of which growing poverty would be a symptom.

Commoditisation and the Public Sphere

CENTRAL to liberalism is a distinction between two spheres, the sphere of the market (or more generally of the economy) where individuals and firms interact to exchange their wares; and the sphere of public discourse where individuals interact as citizens of a polity to debate and determine the actions of the State. The importance that liberals attach to this second sphere was underscored by Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth century British essayist of liberal persuasion, who had lauded democracy as “government by discussion”.

Trump’s Protectionism

ON March 8, Donald Trump made an announcement which according to many has the potential of starting a global trade war. He announced that the US would be raising tariffs on imported steel by 25 per cent and tariffs on imported aluminium by 10 per cent.

Technological Change and Impoverishment

THE fact that the socio-economic effects of technological change depend upon the property relations within which such change occurs is obvious but often not appreciated.

The UGC Directive on Autonomous Colleges

HIGHER education in India is facing a twin danger today. One is its commoditisation, by which is meant not just the fact that higher education itself is becoming a commodity but also that the products of higher education, ie, those in whom higher education is “embodied”, are also becoming commodities, in the sense of simply having their worth assessed both by themselves and by others in terms equivalence to a certain sum of money, the amount that they can command on the market.

The Nirav Modi Scandal

NIRAV Modi, and his uncle Mehul Choksi, are the latest additions to the list of the so-called “entrepreneurs of new India” who have looted public money and decamped with the loot. The Punjab National Bank, the second largest bank in the country, kept giving them loans without any collateral (which is basically what happened through the complicated procedure of the so-called “Letters of Undertaking”); and one fine day Nirav Modi simply left the country with his immediate family, to be followed by his uncle a few days later.

Bubbles, Stocks and Crashes

WHAT is happening in the US economy provides an object lesson on the functioning of neo-liberal capitalism. Pre-first world war capitalism which had witnessed the long Victorian and Edwardian boom had relied on the colonial arrangement for the system’s dynamics.

The 2018-19 Union Budget

THE union budget for 2018-19 sets a new record for cynical dissimulation. To be sure there is a certain amount of “window dressing” in all budgets, but the announcement of fantabulous schemes with scarcely a paisa earmarked for them, as has happened this year, is quite unprecedented in the annals of budget-making in India.

The Economic Survey 2017-18

LIKE the person on the proverbial tiger, the Indian economy is currently riding a precarious course. The Government of India’s Economic Survey for 2017-18 recognises this frankly, but its panacea is to keep one’s fingers crossed and hope that the ride continues.

The Dramatic Rise in Wealth Inequality

OXFAM has just produced a report in which it highlights the dramatic increase in wealth inequality that is occurring in India. The basic data it uses are from Credit Suisse which regularly brings out a Global Wealth Databook; and according to Credit Suisse the top 1 per cent of the population in India cornered 73 per cent of the additional wealth generated in the year 2017.

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Peoples Democracy

ECONOMIC NOTES