Jayati Ghosh’s Blog

In the political landscape of contemporary India, it is only too easy to find more reasons for depression than optimism. The rise of a nastier, more aggressive, communally charged and openly patriarchal political discourse is evident all around us. Oftentimes, it feels like the poet W.B. Yeats’ apocalyptic description is coming true: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity.” Perhaps more than at any previous time in Independent India’s history, we are faced with existential threats to our most important institutions, and challenges even to the very notions of democracy and secularism that…

To say that we are destroying our natural environment in India is only to repeat the obvious. In cities, towns and even villages across the country, we have fouled up the atmosphere to make it almost impossible to breathe; we have polluted water bodies to make them unhealthy or even poisonous; we have injected all sorts of chemicals into the land to cause long-term loss of soil fertility and other problems; we have denuded forests and reduced biodiversity at frightening rates; we are allowing various kinds of hazardous waste, including e-waste, to collect without treatment so that it poisons everything…

Growing economies generally show increasing deployment of bank credit – but in India this has been decreasing for years and recently has been almost flat. What does this suggest about the growth process and the health of the Indian economy. Bank_Credit  (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally posted in the Business Line on 1 January 2018.)

This was the year that the economy tanked. Not necessarily in terms of official growth figures: according to the CSO, GDP growth decelerated, but not by that much. And Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was quick to proclaim that, with GDP growing by an estimated 7.1 per cent for the current financial year, India still remains among the world’s fastest growing economies. Financial investors seem to agree: over the calendar year the stock market has boomed, with the BSE Sensex rising by around 25 per cent and the Nifty50 Index by 28 per cent. But these estimates sit uneasily with the…

There is no doubt that human life is cheap in India, perhaps more so now than ever before. The attacks, atrocities and killings of people from minorities and marginalised groups that have now become so common are particularly appalling because they reflect a culture of impunity. Indeed, the lack of punishment does more than embolden the perpetrators and those who would imitate them: it also points to a deadening of sensibilities not just among those in power but in society as a whole. The murder of innocents is no longer even a cause for much outrage; the horrifying proliferation of…

Ever since Robert Summers and Alan Heston produced what become known as the “Penn World Tables” comparing prices and thereby the purchasing power of currencies across countries, the urge to use some deflator of market exchange rates to compare incomes across countries has been strong. The economic theory behind this is that exchange rate comparisons of less-developed economies consistently undervalue the non-traded goods sector, especially labour-intensive and relatively cheap services, and therefore underestimate real incomes in these developing economies. In some cases, this can be quite significant. In larger emerging markets like China and India, the conversion factors have been…

The global financial media are always on the lookout for signs of an impending financial crisis in China – and the dark prognostications about the future made by several external observers relate to both internal and external financial flows. But there are reasons to believe that both concerns may be overplayed, and that what is occurring especially with respect to cross-border flows is a much more complex process reflecting a medium-term plan of the Chinese state, in accordance with its much more assertive role in the global scene. There has been much discussion on rising internal debt levels, with analysts…

It is probably obvious to everyone that global capitalism is in dire straits, notwithstanding the brave talking up of output recovery that now characterises almost every meeting of the international governing elite. Even so, discussions of the end of capitalism still typically seem overstated and futile, not least because those hoping and mobilising for bringing in an alternative system are everywhere so scattered, weak and demoralised. In effect, capitalism is the only game in town, which is why even in its current debilitated and even decrepit state, it fears no rivals. But maybe that is really not the point. Maybe…

The distribution of the weak global economic recovery since the Great Recession provides little reason for optimism about the future. Unbalanced_Global_Growth (Download the full text in PDF format) ( This article was originally published in the Business Line on November 6, 2017.)

The Modi government made its supposed determination to end corruption in India its signature theme. The massive damage done by demonetisation as well as the continuing chaos produced by the flawed introduction of the Goods and Services Tax have all been justified on the grounds of reducing possibilities of corruption and tax avoidance. Similarly, the imposition of Aadhaar requirements on the population for access to all manner of publicly provided goods and services is regularly justified on the grounds of reducing “leakages” and misappropriation of benefits. The Prime Minister has sought to burnish his image of anti-corruption crusader through emotional…