'...The Northern India Textile Mills Association (NITMA) – an association of textile mills located in Northern India – estimates 50 lakh job cuts owing to the economic slowdown in India. Several reports indicate that at least three lakh people have already lost their jobs in the automobile sector following a decline in the demand for cars across India. Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp and TVS Group companies Sundaram-Clayton Limited and Lucas TVS have already halted their production... A glimpse at the advertisements issued by NITMA makes it clear where the crisis lies.
'India was until recently the fastest-growing major economy in the world, clocking annual rates of 7% or more and sparking predictions that it would soon overtake the likes of the U.K. and Germany. Now it looks like that rapid pace may have been overstated. An academic paper by a former chief economic adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi estimates annual growth averaged closer to 4.5% a year in the fiscal years from 2011-12 through 2016-17, and says recent changes to the way gross domestic product is measured are problematic.
'When finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech omitted numbers relating to the government’s overall revenue and expenditure, for both the previous and current years, this was widely commented on. After all, these numbers are the reason for having a Budget speech in the first place – to provide parliament and the general public a quick overview of the state of the Central government’s finances.
'It is now official that the country has indeed been witnessing jobless growth. Months after rejecting the claim by a leaked report that India's unemployment rate had touched a 45-year high, the government admitted the same on Friday with the latest data showing that joblessness had indeed touched 6.1 per cent in the 12-month period from July 2017 to June 2018. The government had earlier brushed aside a leaked official report on the country's poor job scenario and maintained that the unemployment data was yet to be finalised...'
'Controversy over the credibility of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series is escalating after a recent National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) study found that the companies’ data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) used for computing GDP included shell companies.
'The only two non-government members of India’s National Statistical Commission have resigned, leaving just chief statistician Pravin Srivastava and NITI Aayog’s Amitabh Kant at the head of a body that is the apex advisory organisation for all of the country’s core statistical activities... Their exits were prompted, The Wire has learned, by the inability of the Modi government to interface with and effectively take on board the commission’s contributions. Another sore issue was delays in the release of the new NSSO employment survey data, which was vetted by the statistical body.
'Expressing concerns over “political interference” in influencing statistical data in India, 108 economists and social scientists Thursday called for the restoration of “institutional independence” and integrity to the statistical organisations. Their joint statement comes in the backdrop of controversy over revision of GDP numbers and withholding employment data by the NSSO.
'As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government gets ready to present its final Budget in a few days, here is a look at one of the key factors in fiscal calculations – debt. The combined debt of central and state governments stands at a staggering Rs. 97 lakh crore, up 59% since the end of March 2014, months before the BJP government took over in June 2014. The scale of this debt can be imagined by distributing it over the whole population (see chart below). This works out to Rs. 73,966 per person in 2017-18 as compared to Rs. 54,229 in 2014-15...
'The architects of demonetisation accelerated the downward spiral in investment in the formal sector, mortally wounded those in the agriculture and informal sectors, caused innumerable job losses, and seriously impacted GDP growth... The PM’s promise that Demonetisation would eradicate corruption was undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the initial goodwill towards Demonetisation from the very poor, despite the hardships it inflicted on them. Sadly, however, this promise too was belied.
'The Narendra Modi government on Tuesday appointed former finance ministry official Shaktikanta Das as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, a day after former central bank boss Urjit Patel resigned abruptly. Das, a former finance secretary and current member of the 15th finance commission, shot into the public spotlight in late 2016 when he became the bureaucratic face of demonetisation in the weeks following the note-ban decision... In February 2017, he gave a speech that predicted that the positive effects of demonetisation would be felt from April 2017.
