Finance Ministry Rejected RBI’s Dissent on Electoral Bonds 
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Finance Ministry Rejected RBI’s Dissent on Electoral Bonds 

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar   The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) repeated warnings on the electoral bond scheme in bearer form having the potential to increase black money circulation, money laundering, cross-border counterfeiting and forgery were ignored by the Centre as it was more keen on protecting the identity of donors, the Ministry of Finance’s responses…

India’s Shadow Lobbies: How Business Captured the Government
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India’s Shadow Lobbies: How Business Captured the Government

Divya Guha   It has come to light that according to its profit and loss statement for the quarter ended March 2019, Tata Consultancy Services donated Rs 220 crore to an unnamed beneficiary.   This makes the infotech consultant the single largest political donor.   TCS has outdone Prudent Electoral Trust, which supplied a total…

Sinking MGNREGA
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Sinking MGNREGA

Subodh Varma It would have seemed natural—indeed, imperative—that, as India grapples with a deadly slowdown, with agricultural economy growing only at around 2% and rural joblessness hovering at a shocking 8%, the government would infuse some energy in the implementation of the rural jobs guarantee scheme (MGNREGA). This would put more money in the hands…

9 Million Jobs Lost in 6 Years, a First in Indian History
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9 Million Jobs Lost in 6 Years, a First in Indian History

Courtesy: The Wire A recent working paper published by the Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University has contested official claims on employment, showing an “unprecedented” fall in total employment from 2011–12 to 2017–18. Written by Santosh Mehrotra and Jajati K. Parida, the study says employment dropped by 9 million between these years—“for the first…

Dangerous Agreement to Sign
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Dangerous Agreement to Sign

Prabhat Patnaik (This article was written before the Indian government announced that it was not joining the RCEP. It continues to be relevant, as there is enormous pressure on the government to join the trade agreement– Editor.) On October 24–25, there were widespread peasant protests all over the country against the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership…

FDI in Coal: Why Our Mineral Resources Should Remain in Public Hands
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FDI in Coal: Why Our Mineral Resources Should Remain in Public Hands

Courtesy: News Click Joan Robinson, the well-known economist, had drawn attention to a fundamental difference between foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing sector and in a sector that extracted an exhaustible resource, such as a mineral product. This difference can be illustrated with an example. Suppose in both sectors profits worth Rs 100 are…

A Frontal Attack on Labour in the Shadow of Hindutva
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A Frontal Attack on Labour in the Shadow of Hindutva

The class function of Hindutva is becoming clearer by the day. In the lee of Hindutva, the Modi government is embarking on a massive programme of privatisation of the public sector, and of attack on the working class. Such a programme could not have been launched under the “normal” circumstances of capitalist rule; it would…

Why Aggregate Employment in India Is Shrinking
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Why Aggregate Employment in India Is Shrinking

One of the major promises on which the 2014 elections were won was massive job creation. Even after its stunning victory in 2019, primarily fought on the national security plank, among the first things the new Narendra Modi government did was to set up a cabinet committee to create jobs. How successful has it been?…

What the Centre Needs to Do if it Wants to Tackle the Economic Slowdown
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What the Centre Needs to Do if it Wants to Tackle the Economic Slowdown

Only a few weeks ago, the central government was talking grandly about India reaching a $5-trillion economy and refusing to recognise the severe slowdown India is going through. (This is not such a grand ambition when compared with China, which is often portrayed as India’s competitor, because by 2025, China’s economy is expected to achieve…