Negating the impact of the current inflationary episode in India on the poor requires both the ensuring of appropriate supplies through imports, and a transfer of purchasing power from the profit earners to the workers. Hence, even if augmentation of supplies through resorting to imports, as the government is doing now in the case of foodgrains, succeeds in ending inflation, there is still the need to put additional purchasing power in the hands of the poor so that they regain their earlier real income. The author argues that the basic problem with the 2007-08 budget is that it is oblivious of these social demands of a situation of profit inflation.

The paper explores the controversy that has surrounded the West Bengal Government's land acquisition programme in Singur and situates it within the overall context of economic growth and transformation. It argues one of the most adversely affected groups as a result of the acquisition is relatively large farmers for whom agriculture is a source of accumulation and not livelihood and subsistence. This might explain in part why the resistance has been so strong. The paper argues that equitable and sustained growth is possible only by reducing the share of agriculture in the labour force and therefore that the West Bengal Government's strategy has to focus on maximising the generation of non-farm rural employment.

The declared aims of the Planning Commission's Approach to the XIth Plan, all of which require substantially increased public expenditure in physical infrastructure and social sectors, simply cannot be met within the confines of a restrictive fiscal policy stance. The need to rethink policies of resource generation and financial regulation is therefore urgent. In this context, this paper, presented to the National Commission on Enterprises in the Informal Sector, seeks to examine the effects of the three perceptions underlying the prevailing fiscal conservatism, questions their validity and offers some alternatives for mobilising resources for development.

Basel II is the modified framework of supervisory regulations governing capital adequacy for internationally active banks, published by the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision. This paper argues that while the Revised Accord is yet another attempt by the global financial community to remedy the woes associated with unhindered financial liberalization, it will only serve to exacerbate the already existing conflicts between the objectives of financial stability and economic development facing developing countries under the present paradigm.

In recent years, the media has created a lot of hype about the UPA government's budgets, stating that these are examples of ''reforms with human face''. This government assumed power on May 22, 2004, with the support of the Left parties, and was expected to bring about major changes in the economic policies in favour of the poor. The question which naturally arises is whether these expectations are fulfilled or whether this government too is framing policies favourable to the richer segments of the population. This paper attempts to find an answer to this question by analyzing the recent budget and the two previous ones presented by Mr. P Chidambaram, the Finance Minister.

Successive governments in India have lacked the vision or the political will to recognize that for adopting a broad-based and effective pro-poor programme as well as finance its development, it must shift its fiscal policy in a direction that is geared towards taxing the rich effectively in order to generate more tax revenues and a high tax-GDP ratio. In fact, the trend has been to the contrary: the rich have received several tax concessions. The capital market, the corporate sector and the new service sectors have also received unduly large concessions. This note outlines the specific demands for an alternative resource mobilization strategy which has been put forward by the combined left parties in India.

The change in banking policy currently underway is eroding the role of the banking sector as a means for more rapid and broad-based development. The change also seems to be worsening the difficulties being faced by domestic banks and creating new ones, leading to an increase in fragility. Above all, there is a danger that banking ''reform'' is paving the way for a decline of domestic control over banking operations as a result of international takeovers, with attendant adverse implications for economic sovereignty. Taking note of these dangers, The Independent Commission on Banking and Financial Policy in its Interim Report makes a series of recommendations relating to:

(a) the ownership issues; (b) the perils of consolidation of financial institutions (c) the regulatory mechanisms; and (d) the revival of development and social banking to ensure broad-based credit delivery in the rural areas.

This is the complete Final Report of 'the Commission on Farmers' Welfare' which was set up at the end of September 2004 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India, to look into the agricultural crisis in the state, manifest most glaringly in farmers' suicides. It was the opinion of the commission that the agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh can be linked to a combination of wrong public polices of liberalisation and globalisation policies at the central and state government levels and failures at the level of local implementation. It made recommendations for corrective policies in six different areas related to agriculture.

Providing an overview of the trends towards the global harmonisation of economic policies, this paper argues that the challenges faced by developing countries in addressing their local developmental concerns call for sub-federal governance structures and strategic re-engineering of federal finances.

Even as the Bretton Woods Institutions are opposed to  reform of the international financial architecture to prevent crises, they are ardently searching for ways to deal with the fallout of crises on sovereign debt. C.P. Chandrasekhar, Jayati Ghosh and Smitha Francis examine the Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism (SDRM) advocated by the IMF, discuss the factors that motivate those advocating it and assess the likely consequences of its implementation.

The majority of academics and activists alike seem to be complacently unaware of the depth of the hunger stalking India's tribal areas, villages and urban slums. The complacence arises from the fact that while the crisis over forty years ago was caused by a deficiency of supply which everyone could understand, the problem today is caused by deficiency of demand.

Patterns in the insurance sector after liberalisation have so far contradicted the predictions of those who argued that this would deliver lower prices and better services for consumers.

The new Finance Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh, has already declared his intention to try and increase purchasing power, especially of the domestic middle classes.

Budget 2002-03 has been criticised by different sections of the population for the taxes it imposes, the concessions it withdraws, the giveaways it fails to deliver and for its overall lack of direction. In this edition of Macroscan, C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh assess the factors behind these responses and argue that the revised figures for 2001-02, more than the budget figures for 2002-03, reveal the reasons for the government's acts of commission and omission.