ECONOMIC NOTES

The Perverse Strategy of the Budget

 SINCE even the highest bourgeois oracle, the IMF, has cast doubts on the veracity of India’s GDP estimates, the precise budget figures based on the assumptions of a certain level, and growth rate, in nominal GDP, mean very little; in fact, the current budget, while announcing several tax measures, has not even bothered to give estimates of how much revenue loss or gain they would cause.

AI and the Case for Socialism

AT the recently concluded summit at Davos where the rich and powerful of the world had gathered for their annual jamboree, there was much excitement about Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI of course is not yet so profitable as to be introduced widely, but the capitalists and their backers gathered at Davos believed that the corner would be turned very soon. The question of the unemployment it would generate was raised occasionally but generally brushed aside.

The Drive for Colonialism

Post-war imperialism was founded upon a basic contradiction, which becomes clear when we compare it with the pre-World War I period. The leader of the imperialist world in any period typically fulfils its leadership role by running an overall balance of payments deficit vis-à-vis other major countries to which capitalism is getting diffused.

The Gangster Phase of Imperialism

WHEN the Soviet Union collapsed, liberal bourgeois writers had proclaimed the arrival of an era marked by the universal triumph of democracy and stability; they had considered the socialist challenge unnecessary and counterproductive, and believed that capitalism which had already given political independence to its colonies, and introduced universal adult franchise and welfare state measures at its core, would, in the absence of this challenge, secure for mankind peace, economic security and individual freedom.

Pushing The Financial System In A Dangerous Direction

The BJP-led government has just got parliament to pass a legislation permitting up to 100 percent foreign equity-ownership in India’s insurance sector. This, the Prime Minister has announced, marks the beginning of a major “reform” in India’s financial sector, towards presumably much greater private, including foreign, ownership of financial institutions. This would doubtless mark a significant reversal of the policy towards this sector that has been pursued in the post-independence period.

An Outrageous Assault On The Indian Constitution

SEVERAL employment schemes, each limited in scope and constrained by the availability of fiscal resources, had existed in different states of the country earlier; what the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme enacted in 2005 did was to introduce a uniform, nation-wide, essentially centrally-funded, demand-driven scheme: one person per rural household could get up to a hundred days of employment on demand, failing which the person demanding work would have t

The World Bank Miracle: How to Show Rising Poverty as Declining

OF late, there have been several academic papers and media write-ups on the World Bank’s 2025 claim of steeply declining extreme poverty in the world, especially in Asia. It would be wonderful if this was true, but it is not true. This claim is spurious, arising from a statistical legerdemain that the Bank and governments have practised for many decades, ignoring all criticism.

Economics and Capitalism

IT is a well-known fact that contemporary “mainstream” economics, the only kind which is taught to students over much of the world, does not capture the reality of capitalism. What is less recognized is that this “mainstream” economics, not just in its existing incarnations, but no matter what new incarnations it assumes, is incapable of capturing the reality of capitalism. Let us see why.

Economics and Capitalism

IT is a well-known fact that contemporary “mainstream” economics, the only kind which is taught to students over much of the world, does not capture the reality of capitalism. What is less recognized is that this “mainstream” economics, not just in its existing incarnations, but no matter what new incarnations it assumes, is incapable of capturing the reality of capitalism. Let us see why.

Apropos “Western Civilisation”

ACCORDING to a report in the Times of India (November 23), the United States has asked European countries to restrict immigration in order to preserve “Western Civilization”. Many in the Third World would find the term “Western Civilization” laughable, especially if it is used in the sense of denoting something precious and worth preserving. The atrocities committed by Western imperialist countries against people all over the world over the last several centuries have been so horrendous that using the term “civilization” to cover such behaviour appears grotesque.

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