C. P. Chandrasekhar’s Blog

Less than a year back, a former chief executive of Mastercard, Ajay Banga, was in a surprise move picked to head the World Bank. Putting a Wall Street player addicted to profits in charge of a development institution claiming to help lift poor countries out of their underdevelopment seemed incongruous. Given that the Bank was and is seen my many as an institution with a disappointing track record and a governance structure unfit to meet the development challenges of the current epoch, a person with demonstrated concern with social purpose was the needed choice. Banga’s appointment too was a disappointment.…

Thames Water, one of England’s many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing. Unable to mobilise £500 million from shareholders who have milked the company over years, Kemble Water, the parent company of Thames Water, defaulted on debt service payments of £190 million that fell due in the first week of April 2024. Meanwhile, rotting infrastructure resulting from long years of underinvestment under private ownership is resulting in leakages that are egregiously polluting water sources with sewage. So much so that the…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), predominantly a club of rich market economy countries, has just released preliminary estimates of the flow of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) or “aid” from 31 members of its Development Assistance Committee to developing country recipients. The figures seem to suggest that nothing really changes in that domain. The promise held out in a UN General Assembly resolution of 1970 that “Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance […] and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7% of its gross national product […]…

India’s government has since the year of its G20 Presidency claimed to have restored the country’s role as the ‘Voice of the South’ in global dialogues. That is often backed up by reference to its efforts to focus attention on the problem of debt stress and default in poor developing countries, and to the induction of the African Union into the G20. Third World ‘leadership’ is being won by building solidarity among less developed countries is the argument. But recent episodes suggest that in practice that may not be what India is managing to achieve. One such episode occurred at…

Recent discussions on economic policy in the US and other high-income nations make it appear that there is only one domain and one instrument that really matter: monetary policy and interest rates. Whether on the eve of meetings of the US Fed’s monetary policy committee, or in the interregnum between meetings, economic policy discussions largely focus on whether the Fed would begin cutting rates; whether the expectations of “the markets” on the likelihood of those cuts and their magnitude will be met; and whether investors have “factored” in the likelihood that those cuts would or would not occur. It is…

At the time of writing, the 13th ministerial meet of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is under way in Abu Dhabi. Among the many issues that are being discussed are two of concern for less developed countries generally and India in particular. The first relates to the renewal of a moratorium on imposition of trade taxes on digital services identified as “electronic transmissions”. The second concern is that of finding a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding of food, or the legality under WTO rules of measures to procure at administratively prescribed, ‘non-market’ prices of food to be…

Indian federalism is on the verge of breakdown. Ministers from opposition-ruled States have taken to the streets in New Delhi to protest against discrimination by the Centre. And the Prime Minister, who leads the use of a divisive majoritarian agenda for political gains, has attacked the protestors saying they are breaking up the country by using the narrative of a North-South divide for political purposes. The fact is that opposition parties leading state governments are under siege. Central agencies are being used to scare and incarcerate State level opposition party leaders. Central directives and schemes are being used to undermine…

As the distance between Maldives and India widens, with the latter being asked to withdraw its uniformed personnel stationed in the former, questions are being asked about how Maldives will manage without India’s help on the economic and regional security fronts. As if echoing that sentiment, in Article IV consultation reports following the COVID pandemic year 2020, the IMF has been underlining the country’s vulnerability to external and overall debt distress. The Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu, who won an election his party fought on an anti-India platform, appears convinced that with Chinese support he can do without India. He clearly…

Recruitment drives held over the last week of January, in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Rohtak in Haryana, for Indian workers to undertake construction and caregiver jobs in Israel have captured global attention. Thousands of job aspirants, who had either registered online or just walked in for interviews, were seen as vying for 10,000 advertised positions to be filled in each of these locations. Promised a salary in excess of Rs. 1,30,000 a month plus perks varying from a small bonus to free accommodation, the applicants are willing to ignore the risks associated with migrating to a country engaged in…

On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio. That surprised some. Going by the IMF’s stated ‘principles’, the disbursal should not have occurred because the country had failed to meet the conditions and targets specified by the lender for continuation of the programme. Besides, the $4.7 billion reflected not only the delayed release of a $3.3 billion tranche that was due last November, but also the release in advance, or ahead of schedule,…