On The Question of ‘Engine of Growth’

Since the past three decades policy makers in India and across the developing world had been grappling with the problem of identifying the appropriate ‘engine of growth’ for future development. A recent report by the NITI Aayog seems to propose a double engine of manufacturing and services. There had been contesting views as to what ought to be the real engine in a country which has a per capita income falling within the low-middle income group although India ranks at the top of this group.

Global Employment Trends During Tariff Wars and Technological Change

EMPLOYMENT across the world is undergoing changes. The changes are multi-dimensional, driven by shifting nature of labour contract by skill grades, impacted by uncertainty and shocks in supply chains. However, the tendencies are neither uniform across countries nor do they show uniformity in direction of change. In some advanced countries, as reported by the ILO in a recent report, unemployment rate has fallen although market sentiments are sluggish.

Socialism and Marx’s ‘Universal Sun’ of Freedom for All

CAPITALISM seems to be approaching its metabolic limits. Global capitalism is facing stagnation in growth with rising inequality together with a planetary crisis related to climate change. Also, there is growing tension between use of new technology and the distribution of gains.

GST Rate Cut: Exuberance and Reality

THE recent rationalisation of GST rates seems to be a sigh of relief to consumers as well as to producers after facing a tyranny of cumbersome tax regime for eight long years since the introduction of GST in 2017.

Growth Estimates with Incongruent Trends

THE first quarter year-on-year estimates of GDP for the current FY 2025-26 turns out to be higher than the last year’s quarter one figures. But these are estimates and hence need to be dissected and seen in relation to other official estimates provided by the government. At the outset a 7.8 per cent growth rate in the first quarter of 2025-26 is higher than all the four quarterly year-on-year growth estimates of the previous year. This is important particularly when lot of uncertainty emerges in the global trade relations.

Hunger and Nutrition Deficit Amid High Growth

OVERWHELMING concern on growth metrics often tend to undermine issues related to wellbeing. Human wellbeing is not directly linked to growth and Prof Amartya Sen argued long back that rising per capita income is not sufficient to ensure augmenting human capabilities. Growth might increase the inputs necessary to sustain a level of welfare, but the outcomes of growth are not automatically welfare enhancing.

Protecting Autonomy against Imperialist Coercion

THE imagery of a flat world, embedded in equal partnership and interdependence between countries within the “global village,” based on gains through free trade and market forces while eschewing power from economic relations, ends in a dramatic climax. Those who could not see imperialism in the globalised world, or could only recognise “empire without geography” as capital combined with power in a stateless form, now seem perplexed by the crude justification and assertion of coercion by the US under President Trump.

Questioning Citizenship and Using It as a Tool of Control

MIGRATION is a flow of labour that reflects both a circuit of active labour and a circulation of reserve army of labour. Different regimes of accumulation and emerging growth poles define the nature of both circuit of capital and labour. ‘Footloose capital’ prefers ‘footloose labour’ as production structures are more dispersed and in a state of flux in the current regime of neoliberal globalisation. Such labour are workers on the move. They are like packets of labour power, undefined, docile and apparently without any political voice.

Reforms, Investment and Innovation Gaps

IN recent decades, there has been a growing association between global investment and innovation. Nearly 20 per cent of global multinational enterprises (MNEs) are technology firms, and the sectors attracting the largest shares of investment are closely linked to digital innovation.

ELI Scheme: Socialising Costs for Private Gains

THE cabinet has approved the Employment Linked Incentive (ELI) scheme with an outlay of Rs 99,446 crore, claiming to incentivise the creation of more than 3.5 crore jobs over a period of two years. Out of these, 1.92 crore beneficiaries will be first timers, entering the workforce. The benefits of the Scheme would be applicable to jobs created between August 1, 2025, and July 31, 2027.

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Peoples Democracy

economic policy & Labour