The government wanted to ensure that the “delayed” transfer of IDBI to a private player goes through at any cost. While the sops it has offered to Fairfax make the latter a clear winner, the exchequer appears to have been short-changed.

The doomsday scenario painted by some AI industry insiders cannot be brushed off. But is it also a ploy by the tech behemoths to shut the door on smaller players, secure profits, and establish dominance?

Economic insecurity and growing distrust in institutions are undermining governments’ ability to sustain support for climate action. To rebuild that support, they must show that climate policies can reduce household bills, create decent jobs, and ensure that the biggest emitters pay their fair share.

The "chaotic" movements in bond markets that began with a sell-off of US Treasuries could spell trouble for the Trump administration before elections and be an inflection point for US hegemony.

By centralising control over mineral-bearing land and weakening States’ fiscal powers, the MMDR Amendment Act, 2026, passed without discussion, clears the way for an expanded extractive regime that disproportionately benefits large mining interests.

FIFA's plan to "capitalise" future revenues may have failed for now, but football federations are only pawns in the larger game of finance subordinating the sport to extract every dollar possible.

The global tax system has repeatedly put corporate interests ahead of people and the planet by allowing multinationals to transfer profits to tax havens. If adopted, the proposed UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation would overturn the century-old rules that make this possible.

An AI-led semiconductor boom has transformed South Korea’s economy, but speculative finance, soaring valuations, and currency pressures trigger memories of past crises.

A strategy that opens India’s doors to Chinese investment to revive its ailing manufacturing sector could prove futile. The alternative is to discipline domestic capital and leverage the country’s vast domestic market.

The article critiques the idea that capitalism can be permanently reformed through state intervention, arguing that capitalism’s inherent tendencies undermine such efforts.

Under the guise of routine voter-roll maintenance, India’s Election Commission has purged tens of millions of voters, disproportionately affecting opposition strongholds, the poor, and Muslim minorities. The result is an electoral system increasingly designed to favor the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Our roadmap has been shaped by experts across the world, from UN agencies to grassroots movements. We call on political leaders at all levels to use it.

A frenzied scramble for a stake in AI has set off a mega IPO boom, with abundant liquidity and hype driving valuations to extraordinary levels. As prices begin to fall, investor capital and pension savings are increasingly at risk.

The US-China summit was less about forging agreement and cooperation between two major world powers and more about China making a declaration: that its time as global hegemon has come.

Two features of the present global scenario are of particular interest: the first is the stagnation of the world economy, and the second is the threat to the dollar.

There seems to be clear intent in the UAE’s recent decision to opt out of OPEC, even as it exploits a geopolitical moment to declare allegiance to the US-Israel axis and facilitate a diversification strategy.

When an authoritarian state apparatus that favours factory owners and discourages trade union activity leaves little space for the routine negotiation of grievances, spontaneous “revolt” becomes the vent for accumulated worker anger.

The war has destabilised the global oil market through speculation, ignited US inflation, and spooked financial markets, leaving America more vulnerable and Trump politically trapped.

The Iran war is one piece of a broader American strategy that weakens multilateralism, shrinks global trade, and deepens economic vulnerability in the Global South.

Tariffs on Indian exports went from 25 per cent to 18 per cent. In return, the US gets cheaper access for its farm goods, a say in where India buys oil, and $500 billion in planned purchases.

Following aggressive lobbying by the Trump administration, more than 145 countries agreed to give big US multinationals a free pass under the global corporate minimum tax rules that were agreed in 2021.

The hurried pact, a reaction to US tariffs, will damage India’s manufacturing and stunt its domestic market expansion a costly price for political symbolism.

At the heart of US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is the belief that the world can be carved up among major powers, with the United States free to act with impunity in its “backyard.” In reality, this approach is bound to fuel instability, fracture markets, and undermine America’s economic interests.

IndiGo's crisis shows how liberalised aviation leans on forbearance profits first, safety later, with the state and passengers holding turbulence.

Despite strong opposition in Congress, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has launched an ambitious industrial policy aimed at boosting renewable-energy capacity and expanding domestic defense capabilities. But sky-high interest rates and fiscal constraints risk putting these objectives out of reach.

Trump’s tariffs now target China’s Asian partners, pressing them into costly "deals" that open markets to the US and edge them away from Beijing.

The world is facing an inequality crisis fueled by stagnant wages, eroding social protections, and the extreme concentration of wealth. Reversing these trends requires reassessing the policies that produced them and equipping governments with the information they need to pursue effective reforms.

The Centre’s push for PSB consolidation and foreign investment prioritises bank profitability over financial inclusivity.

The IMF calls it reform, Trump calls it strategy, and Argentina calls it Tuesday. This “revival” looks like a clearance sale for U.S. interests.

The central bank once spent billions defending the rupee. Now it watches it fall, saving ammunition for when Trump’s real assault begins.

The neoliberal financial order punishes spending and taxes, creating self-reinforcing deficits. The bond market is feeling the strain.

As Trump’s tariffs bite, India turns to new partners. But without building domestic demand, the search for exits risks going in circles.

There is nothing definitive about policy under US President Donald Trump. With the deadline for accepting his trade demands having passed, a revised set of tariffs has been announced, lower than the originally threatened hikes of up to 49 per cent in some cases.

Retail investors were dispensable. It took elite hedge funds sounding the alarm for SEBI to act proof of a rigged system and selective enforcement.

Trump's tariff threats worked. The OECD’s Pillar Two is crumbling, and the push for a fair global tax system may not survive the decade.

Trump’s sudden exit dashed hopes of G7 nations eyeing concessions, showing the US only wants acceptance of its economic and political demands.

Does Japanese banking giant SMBC’s 20 per cent stake buy in Yes Bank signal a new era of foreign control in Indian banking?

The leaders changed, the slogans softened, but the North still calls the shots and the South still pays the price for its borrowed dreams.

It will also give the dollar a serious identity crisis.

A Rs.1,530 crore loss from mispriced derivatives and delayed disclosures raises concerns about weak oversight and risky strategies in private banking

India is pursuing fresh free trade agreements under US pressure. This could hurt growth, productivity, jobs, and trade and current account deficits.

Nobody can claim that the rate of growth of agricultural production, especially of foodgrain production, has been higher in the neoliberal period than during the years of dirigiste development that preceded it; it may have been somewhat lower but let us agree that it is certainly no higher.

Make no mistake: Trump and his team do not wish to destroy the US state; they aim to capture it and make it even more an instrument to serve the rich.

Donald Trump’s foreign policy has left commentators in a real tizzy. His markedly differing positions with regard to Ukraine and Gaza, in the first case apparently pursuing peace, and in the second asking for ethnic cleansing of an entire population, have left them wondering whether his influence on world affairs is a "positive" one or not.

Under late capitalism, there is an assault on the working people that is reminiscent of early capitalism and this assault is worldwide, not just in the third world but in the advanced capitalist countries as well. This assault is at three levels, economic, political and ideological.

Georg Lukacs, the renowned Marxist philosopher had once remarked that “even the worst socialism was better than the best capitalism”. That remark made in 1969 and repeated in 1971, no doubt on the basis of Lukacs’ perception of actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with which he was familiar, had been treated sceptically even in Western Left circles at the time.

Well-known Marxist scholar, the late Amalendu Guha, had argued persuasively that in modern India there co-existed in the minds of the people a dual national consciousness: a local, regional-linguistic nationality consciousness, of being a Bengali, or a Tamil, or a Gujarati or an Odiya; and also simultaneously an overarching pan-Indian consciousness.

A chorusof “establishment” voices, from consultancy firms to the financial press, has been demanding a boost to domestic consumption as a means of reviving the flagging growth rate of the Indian economy. The latest to join this chorus is the Reserve Bank of India which in its latest Bulletin has asked for a boost to consumption to “rekindle the animal spirits” of the “entrepreneurs” in the economy.

The imperialist countries led by the US have been imposing unilateral sanctions that do not have any backing from the United Nations against countries that dare to defy their diktat. According to one estimate almost one third of the countries of the world have been subject to such sanctions at one time or another

Liberal opinion is invariably opposed to “nationalism”. It treats “nationalism” as a homogeneous term that necessarily entails a non-friendly, non-accommodative and rivalrous attitude towards other countries. This view however is completely erroneous; anti-colonial third world nationalism is entirely different from the nationalism that developed in Europe in the seventeenth century following the Westphalian Peace Treaties.

The Indian newspapers have been full of stories about the fall of the rupee vis-à-vis the US dollar in the last few days. Just over a month ago, on November 27, the value of the dollar was Rs 84.559; by December 29, it had risen to Rs 85.5. And this fall of the rupee has occurred despite a running down of foreign exchange reserves by the Reserve Bank of India to stabilise the rupee: the reserves which had amounted to $657.89 billion on November 22, had come down to $644.39 by December 20, and yet the fall of the rupee could not be prevented; without the running down of the reserves the fall would clearly have been even greater.

Donald Trump is threatening to use tariffs as a weapon against other countries. He has already made three threatening statements: first, he threatened the BRICS countries that if they dared to move away from the dollar, then they would have to face 100 per cent tariff in the US market. Second, he has threatened the European Union that unless the EU bought more American oil and gas as a means of reducing its trade surplus vis-à-vis the US (the surplus on goods trade was $208.7 billion in 2023), it would face high tariffs in the US market.

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.

Kliberal 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.

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.

Hearing a petition on November 22 to remove the term "socialism" from the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, the Chief Justice of India made two significant observations.

When Azerbaijan as the Presidency of this year's Conference of Parties (COP29) held at Baku, in Azerbaijan, informed delegates working on extended time that participating countries had arrived at an agreement, there were many who disagreed.

In global climate negotiations, that continued at the twenty ninth edition of the Conference of Parties (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, there is agreement on one issue.

It is common for governments these days to provide fiscal transfers to capitalists, whether through reduced corporate tax rates, or by providing direct cash subsidies, to encourage greater investment by them and thereby stimulate the economy.

Trump's victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak.

The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba and Bolivia.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize, the Nobel for "Economic Sciences", has always been controversial. This is true of the 2024 award to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson as well.

This year's Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three US-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations.

Several international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call "poverty". The World Bank has been in it for some time, but now we have a new measure of "Multidimensional Poverty" brought out by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

In early October, in a show of pique, a European Commission proposal to impose additional tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent (on top of the pre-existing 10 per cent) on electrical vehicles (EVs) imported from China, was passed by a majority vote in the European parliament.

The "inevitable striving of finance capital", Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) "to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory".

The fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it).

Europe is clearly battling to stall its decline in the global economy. Most recently, the Mario Draghi report on “The future of European competitiveness” commissioned by the European Union reflected that sentiment.

West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did.

During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in conformity with the wishes of the electorate.

During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the “unilateral” western sanctions.

Recently Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge quipped that the 'U' in UPS (Unified Pension Scheme) stands for U-Turn. While that may be seen as stretching interpretative liberty, he was touching a raw nerve.

A Good deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina's government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation in that country.

The latest controversy in the South Asian University, over an interview with a philosopher mentioned in a student's research proposal that resulted in severe backlash and eventual resignation of an eminent foreign professor, would appear to be ludicrous if it were not so tragic.

India's quasi-federal democracy, which was in danger of collapsing into a centralised authoritarianism, seems to be holding up.

The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded.

The popular insurrection that ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government offers important lessons for the international community and neighboring India.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it has reached an agreement with its foreign private creditors to restructure the $12.5 billion of its external debt that they hold. The agreement incorporates a novel instrument: a macro-linked bond for which the payout is linked to the GDP performance of the debtor country.

In the search for the next country that would transit from backward to advanced nation status, India’s name sometimes features. This is partly because the idea has been mooted by Prime Minister Narender Modi, who promises to make India a ‘developed nation’ by 2047.

In his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state.

The coming to power of governments led by fascists is either a reality or a threat today over large parts of the world. In Europe at present there are several countries where fascists are leading governments; France was on the verge of being added to this list, in which case it would have been the second major European power, after Italy, to have a fascist government.

Figures on India's balance of payments in financial year 2023-24, recently released by the Reserve Bank of India, have added to the hype on India's growth story.

For the French elections which Emmanuel Macron has called in the wake of the impressive showing by the Far-Right in the European parliamentary polls, four parties on the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, the Greens, and France Unbowed (of Jean-Luc Melenchon), have come together to form a New Popular Front to take on the fascist challenge of Marine Le Pen.

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty.

The election results, which gave both the BJP and the NDA far lower seats than they had in the previous parliament and led to a coalition government, surprised many. But now, attention has shifted to assessing what that would do to the behaviour and policies in different spheres of this version of a Modi-led government.

The fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

There has been a significant diffusion of production occurring in the world economy. Many call this phenomenon a shift from a US-led world economy to a "multipolar world economy", but no matter what one thinks of this description, the fact of diffusion is indubitable.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's inability to secure a parliamentary majority in India's general election has shattered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility. Modi will now have to rely on coalition partners to pass legislation, potentially curbing his efforts to consolidate power.

Against all odds, in the elections to India’s parliament, whose results were announced last week, the opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance managed to prevent the rampaging ruling party, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from securing a majority on its own.

A Distinction is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems).

The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have come as a shock to those who had mistakenly believed in the problematic exit polls, which continued the narrative so assiduously cultivated by the previous Modi government.

The current protests in US university campuses demanding "divestment" from firms linked to Israel's military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

Each strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

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.

John Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker.

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.

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.

The other day the Chief Executive Officer of Niti Ayog made a fantastic claim, that the poverty ratio in India had fallen below 5 percent according to the 2022-23 consumption expenditure survey data.

There is a paradox at the core of the efflorescence of science that has occurred over the last millennium. In essence this efflorescence has the potential to increase human freedom immensely.

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.

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.

In The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing that the barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism;

The BJP government holds that truth is what Modi says; if evidence points otherwise then evidence must be wrong and should be suppressed. Modi says that India never had it so good as during the last decade of his government; but since official statistics contradict him, the statistics must be wrong and the statistical system must be changed.

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.

There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted "unproductive workers";

The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery.

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.

The significance of Lenin's Imperialism lay in the fact that it totally revolutionised the perception of the revolution. Marx and Engels had already visualised the possibility of colonial and dependent countries having revolutions of their own even before the proletarian revolution in the metropolis.

The recent collapse of the protracted negotiations to restructure Zambia's external debt, following a default in November 2020, underlines the failure of the prevailing international financial architecture to address global challenges.

We observe a strange phenomenon everyday, so strange that its strangeness goes generally unnoticed. Government spokespersons from the prime minister downwards go on repeating ad nauseam that India is the most rapidly growing major economy in the world today, that it will soon become a 5 trillion dollar economy, and that it has overtaken China in terms of the growth rate of the gross domestic product.

A longish bull-run that added to investor cheer over Christmas week 2023 took the most cited index of Indian stock market activity, the Sensex, to a record 77,240 level on the last trading day of the year.

Argentina's new president Javier Milei proposes to use US dollars as the currency of his country, while abolishing its central bank altogether. What is involved in this proposal is not just maintaining a fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the domestic currency, but an abolition of the domestic currency altogether.

Imperialist hegemony over the third world is exercised not just through arms and economic might but also through the hegemony of ideas, by making the victims see the world the way imperialism wants them to see it.