Articles: 2019

The dividend pay-out of Rs. 1,75,987 crore from the RBI to the government for 2018-19 follows a paradigm shift in the way RBI’s requirement of economic capital is viewed, calculated and supplied as also an accounting rule tweaking to ensure higher income from forex transactions. To understand the... read more

The yawning gap between the mischievous claims and verified data is exactly as it was in the case of ‘black’ money before and after demonetisation. That act dug the grave for small and informal business without tracing any black money. Similarly, the NRC verification exercise may eventually destroy... read more

Over the last several years, Public Sector Banks (PSBs) have been struggling hard to come to grips with mounting Non-Performing Assets (NPAs). Now, PSBs are struggling at the core of their business, which is credit offtake. On NPAs, the government claims that with the Insolvency & Bankruptcy... read more

This is going to be a merger like none other. We had 27 public sector banks (PSBs) in 2017. We have seen two mergers already in recent times – Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank merged into Bank of Baroda (BoB) in April, and the State Bank of India absorbed five of its associates and the Bharatiya Mahila... read more

If many car factories find themselves running idle, or with surplus inventory it could be because there was over-investment in the sector. Owing to a rosy outlook and perhaps excessive exuberance a few years ago, many independent car companies decided to invest in new capacities, to take advantage... read more

If the changes to article 370 of the Constitution of India were meant “to bring J&K truly into India's fold”, as has been argued by the Union Home Minister Amit Shah, then this is the one objective that the move has not delivered, at least not just yet. There can be no dispute that J... read more

The numbers are in and uncontested this time. The growth of the Indian economy, until recently celebrated as the world’s fastest, has slumped to only 5 per cent. Alarm bells ringing, the government’s fire-fighters are out. The government wants investors to invest more, to grow the economy to $5... read more

There has been an animated debate since August 26, 2019 on the decision of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to transfer its surplus under section 47 of The RBI Act, 1934. The amount is Rs. 1,75,987 crores, which amounts to around 0.8 per cent of GDP. Such a transfer is unprecedented in RBI history.... read more

It is now over 20 days and the average citizen of the nation’s most sensitive border State, Jammu & Kashmir, remains cut off from friends, relatives and the rest of the world. Landlines have begun working but the restoration appears to be slow. There is no word on when the restrictions will be... read more

India is possibly the only country in the world which mandates that a profit-making company spend two percent of its after-tax profits on “corporate social responsibility’ (CSR). This requirement came as part of the new company law of 2013, which replaced the fifty-seven-year-old company law of... read more

India wants to grow its economy to US$ 5 trillion. People want jobs and their incomes to grow. India needs its industrial sector to grow to absorb the millions of people coming off agriculture as they will with productivity in the agricultural sector improving. India cannot rely only on its service... read more

With Jammu and Kashmir leaders behind bars, the people locked up in their houses, schools, colleges, institutions closed, and some voices from the other States celebrating this kind of action and incarceration, do we really think we are making progress with the integration of Kashmir into the rest... read more

Some Indian observers have said that US President Donald Trump’s July 22 offer to mediate on Kashmir has no validity after India abrogated the State’s special status under Article 370. On August 6, Rajya Sabha MP Subramaniam Swamy demanded withdrawal of India’s complaint to the United Nations... read more

The MPC has many reasons for which it has offered a rate cut. First, observed inflation and inflation outlook measured in terms of Consumer Price Index Combined (which means Rural and Urban combined, abbreviated as CPI-C) continues to remain benign and is projected to be within the target of an... read more

That the Monetary Policy Committee will reduce the policy rate for a fourth time in a row was in no doubt. Most expected a cut by 25 basis points, although there were a few who hoped for a more aggressive decrease by 50 basis points. The actual outcome was a cut in the rate by 35 basis points, to 5... read more

US President Donald Trump’s remarks on June 22 during Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the White House have created a storm. Trump replied when Khan requested for his help in resolving the vexed Kashmir issue: “I was with Prime Minister Modi two weeks ago when he asked me whether I... read more

Many years ago, a plainclothes police officer known as an “encounter specialist”, that uniquely Indian term that has sadly become part of everyday usage, sat in his office in the Western suburbs of Mumbai for a long conversation in which he explained upfront how he was not the last word in honesty... read more

On July 11, World Population Day, a Union Minister expressed alarm, in a Tweet, over what he called the “population explosion” in the country, wanting all political parties to enact population control laws and annulling the voting rights of those having more than two children. Just a month earlier... read more

A year when the country celebrates the Mahatma’s 150th birth anniversary offers us a timely opportunity to consider his criticisms of modernity and juxtapose them with those of the other towering figure of his generation, Tagore. Also, fittingly, we are just weeks short of Tagore’s 78th death... read more

The title of this column is actually a very fertile and active area of research in the economics and finance academic professions. The question refers not just to ownership by the government vis-a-vis the private sector, but also between private, domestic and foreign owners. Do banks perform... read more