'The much touted Rs. 20 lakh crore relief package announced by Prime Minister Modi and detailed by the Union finance minister has turned out not to be a relief package at all. Instead of offering a fiscal stimulus, she has urged enterprises of all sizes to borrow from banks to tide over the immediate crisis. To millions of poor people staring at prolonged starvation, all she has offered is an additional allocation for the MNREGA programme.
'What has the BJP-led government of Narendra Modi done since 2014 that does not suggest it wishes to destroy the informal economy, also known as the unorganised sector? While the ‘unorganised’ informal economy now accounts for roughly half of India’s GDP – and is shrinking relative to the share of the private and public corporate sector – it accounts for 80-90 % of the workforce. It includes agriculture, despite the fact that land titles are registered, except for plantations, which are regarded as ‘organised’ despite their unravelling workforces.
'Government of India’s environment ministry has proposed a new set of rules to govern the country’s environment clearance regime for industrial projects like dams, mines, airports, highways etc. The draft Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) notification 2020, which was unveiled last week, proposes to ease processes for business, does away with the public hearings for many projects, ease rules for expansion of projects among other things.
'On January 30, as news came of a gunman firing on protesters near Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University, Republic TV launched a misinformation campaign, effectively lying about the identity of the shooter. The gunman has since been identified as a 17-year-old from Jewar in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Republic TV got a lot of online flak for its coverage of the shooting. And Jamia Millia’s Mass Communication Research Centre decided to ban Arnab Goswami's channel from its placement process this year.
'India woke up on January 8, to witness the largest ever strike with an estimated 25 crore (250 million) workers, employees, farmers and rural labourers stopping work and hitting the streets to protest against the Modi government’s economic policies and divisive politics. Reports coming in from various states indicate that the strike was complete in the country’s massive public sector across sectors, such as steel, coal, other mining, defence production, port & dock, oil & natural gas, telecom, power generation, etc. Ancillary industries also were mostly shut...
'The release of richest people’s lists is usually a signal for much back-slapping and triumphalism in the corporate world and its hangers on in the media. It is seen as some kind of symptom that India is doing well, people are getting wealthier, achhe din (good days) are here, although such lists are only for a 100 people (as in the case of the Forbes India list) or perhaps more (as in IIFL Hurun list), in a country of 1.3 billion people.
'...Privatisation is being introduced in diverse ways. Some public sector enterprises are earmarked for outright sale, not just loss-making ones, but even those which make handsome profits. In others, the government intends to reduce its own share of equity below 51% through disinvestment. In still others, the idea is to break up the total activity into several different individual activities and to privatise some individual activities by divesting the public sector of those; this last route is what is being followed with regard to the Railways.
'India’s sagging economic growth has finally forced the government to relax its strict fiscal deficit targets, but even that may not guarantee a recovery. On September 20, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a reduction in the country’s effective corporate tax rate from around 35% to 25%. For companies that do not avail of any other incentive or commission, the effective tax rate would be just 22%. While India’s equity markets cheered the decision, the bond markets tanked on fears that the government may now have to borrow more to meet its expenses.
'It is ironical that the Narendra Modi government, which never tires of reminding everybody about their nationalism and patriotism, is actually following an economic policy of selling off the country’s national resources to foreign companies. It recently announced measures of easing foreign direct investment (FDI) in coal mining and associated infrastructure, contract manufacturing, single brand retail and digital media.
'This week we once again heard the prime minister and finance minister speak, at a recent media house event in the capital, about how well the economy is doing. The truth is nothing can improve our economic fundamentals till public investment is sharply increased. Manipulating statistics may help manage global headlines for a while, but cannot strengthen our economic fundamentals.
