Jayati Ghosh’s Blog

We all know that the world is an unequal place, both across and within countries. We also know that across the world, people are expressing their anger and disgust at this inequality. This is increasingly revealed in extreme and often paradoxical political results. In the USA, a vote against the establishment has just delivered to power the ultimate crony capitalist, Donald Trump. In the United Kingdom people voted to leave the European Union in the false expectation that curbing migration will improve their own life chances. In India the poor, disgusted by a corrupt self-enriching elite, support a bizarre and…

Is there no one left in our important institutions who is still capable of speaking truth to power? The last year has seen a depressing – even frightening – erosion in the credibility of the major institutions that in different ways are vital for the functioning of our democracy. It is true that the Congress Party when in power has also not covered itself in glory in terms of respecting such institutions, except when forced to do so. But the current “low, dishonest” phase of history (in W.H. Auden’s apt phrase) that we are experiencing in India surely marks a…

Banks strapped with stressed assets are holding back on lending, dampening in the process the principal stimulus to growth in recent years. And there are no alternative routes to growth in sight. Waning_Stimuli   (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published in the Business Line on January 16, 2017.)

In the context of the failed demonetisation and continued shortage of currency, the government continues to push cashless digital payments. What are the implications for Indians? Digital_Payments    (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published in the Business Line on January 2, 2017.)

With the US Federal Reserve deciding to exit the era of low interest rates even when growth in the rest of the world economy falters or remains sluggish, economic uncertainty intensifies. Age_Uncertainty (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published in the Business Line on December 19, 2016)

“Plastic is the new khadi” is the currently popular saying transmitted across social media.  As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government continuously shift the goal posts of the extraordinarily violent demonetisation move, it turns out that the fruit of all the trauma that the majority of the Indian population is going through will be – to become a cashless society! The exhortation to move to e-payments has become the basis for the new definition of nationalism: the ability to pay for something with a card or a mobile phone or internet account is now the real proof of your…

The social contract between a state and its citizens is a complex thing. Philosophers of the European “Enlightenment” saw it as the basis on which society is organised so as to ensure the mutual protection and welfare of its members. It is therefore the implicit social arrangement whereby citizens give up some of their rights and freedoms to the state or a similar authority, in return for some degree of order and stability that would effectively ensure the protection of their remaining rights and freedoms. In very unequal societies, the voluntary nature of such a social contract is not particularly…

Capital flight from Asia points to investor concerns about both political processes in the big Asian developing economies and medium-term economic prospects. developing_asia_hold_ground (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published in the Business Line on December 5, 2016)

A peculiar combination of factors, besides the global recession, explains India's poor export performance in recent times. India_Export_Collapse (Download the full text in PDF format) (This article was originally published in the Business Line on November 21, 2016.)

Two weeks into the surprise announcement of by Prime Minister Modi of the demonetisation of “high value” notes, it is becoming more evident by the day that the primary purpose was political rather than economic, and that this political purpose was specifically directed towards ensuring the fortunes of the ruling party vis-à-vis its rivals. Nothing else can explain the abrupt nature of the announcement or the subsequent manner of its implementation, which has been so apparently insensitive to the specific needs of so much of India’s working population. While a lot of the criticism of this scheme has focussed on…