The aim of all fascistic governments is to disempower the people; and the Modi government is no exception. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which promised one member in every rural household a maximum of 100 days of employment per year was a demand-driven scheme. In a limited sense therefore it gave people a right to employment, not to everyone and not for as many days as a person wanted; but a right nonetheless. It ran counter to the logic of neoliberalism, but became possible because of pressure from the Left at a time when the government…

We present a framework to assess green climate finance and the pathways to building a climate aligned financial system. This would involve the strategic reorientation of central bank interventions, national development banks and multilateral and regional banks and coherent purposive collaborations between these institutions and interventions to decisively reshape the contemporary global financial system that is out of tune with the long-term imperatives of climate action.  Aligning finance to climate goals at the necessary scale, pace and direction requires the calibration of financial flows across three axes: ‘public-private’; ‘real-financial’ and ‘national-international’. Along the first axis the nature-depleting, climate imperiling logic…

Liberal opinion holds that the international monetary and financial system is a device for promoting the interests of all participating countries by providing a convenient payments arrangement within which trade can be carried on. The reality however is altogether different: the international system is founded upon the hegemony of western imperialism, and in turn sustains this hegemony. Since the US dollar is the lynchpin of this international system, one can say that the hegemony of the dollar in the international economy is both sustained by and in turn sustains, the hegemony of western imperialism; and this hegemony even comes in…

This paper evaluates the IMF's debt sustainability analyses (DSAs), delving into their methodologies and implications and highlighting their problems. Since 2002, the DSAs have been the cornerstone of the IMF programs, providing the primary analytical tool to justify and determine the paths and targets specified. Although the DSAs evolved significantly over time, they have severe foundational problems. They rely heavily on strong assumptions and staff judgments, and thereby, they are primarily non-transparent. Secondly, there are significant issues regarding the conduct of DSAs. They have grown excessively complex, hindering consensus on components without necessarily improving assessment quality. Thirdly, the IMF makes…

The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in LMICs was signalled by instances of failure to meet external debt obligations denominated in hard currencies. The policy response has included attempts to restructure domestic sovereign debt issued largely in domestic currencies, justified by identifying the crisis as one of excessive aggregate public debt rather than just unsustainable levels of external debt. It is argued that debt stressed governments having high levels of aggregate public debt need to reduce their gross financing needs (foreign and domestic). This assertion ignores the difference between the stress associated with servicing debt in domestic and foreign currency. Governments…

It’s common to hear analysts talk of “global growth” in a way that suggests that everyone in the world is affected by it equally. Of course, it is well known that this is not true either across or within national economies. Countries differ hugely in terms of their ability to garner benefits from more rapid global growth or avoid the losses associated with growth slowdown or declines. And within most countries, growing inequality has meant that the rich everywhere have tended to benefit disproportionately from period of economic expansion and avoid the costs of declines. Nevertheless, the sense of broadly…

Karl Marx had once said that all criticism must begin with the criticism of religion. Paraphrasing Marx one can say in the current economic context that all criticism must begin with the criticism of the GDP. This conceptually and statistically dubious measure cannot cognize the phenomenon of exploitation. For instance, it looks at the income of the Mughal emperor and his aristocracy as a return for services rendered by them and adds it to the total production of the country in a blatant act of double counting; and yet it is used by defenders of neoliberalism to paint a rosy…

Despite uneven economic recovery since the pandemic, poverty, inequality, and food insecurity continue to worsen, including in the Asia-Pacific region, which used to fare better than the rest of the Global South. Food Matters These trends are not new but have been around for some time. Food security has deteriorated worldwide for a decade and will likely worsen. Food security measures are more indicative of well-being than traditional poverty measures, which reflect cash incomes subject to inflation and spatial variations. After all, over half of the poor’s incomes worldwide are spent on food. Due to global heating and rising sea…