Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Feb 01, 2011

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an educator and commentator

Pedestrian economics

March.03 : Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Budget will certainly stoke inflationary fires that are already raging. It is, therefore, amazing that sections of the same media that had been urging the finance minister to contain inflationary expectations have now gone to town heaping fulsome praise on his Budget proposals. True, income-tax payers are exultant.

Budget 2010: Great Expectations

Feb.16 : When, on Friday February 26, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee presents the Union Budget for the financial year that starts on April 1, the first full-fledged budget of the second United Progressive Alliance government, there will be expectations that he will announce proposals that would bring down food inflation — the single most important and intractable economic issue currently facing the country’s rulers. There is every possibility that such expectations will not be fulfilled, not because the finance minister does not want food inflation to abate.

The importance of Brics, South Africa included

June.14 : THE IMPORTANCE of Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the world economy has increased manifold since the acronym was first coined nearly seven years ago. Few could have imagined then how the American economy would collapse and bring down with it much of the rest of the world. It is worth revisiting the original formulations on the significance of these four major countries that were made by representatives of a major American investment bank — now a much-maligned tribe and justifiably so — to understand why these economies would together influence the future of the planet we live in.

Govt must build, repair to ease recession impact

Feb1 : When will the worldwide recession end? When will the economies of nearly 200 countries on the planet revive? Will this take place during 2009 or is such a possibility unrealistic? Will India’s economy revive prior to the rest of the world? Once the economies of the West turn around, will India bounce back swiftly and with greater vigour?

Will PM’s economics strike a market-welfare balance?

May.18 : Now that the Left and the Right in Indian politics have been convincingly defeated by the Congress, the big question is whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would, in his second term, espouse policies that accentuate the rightward shift in his government’s economic ideology. Would he instead emphasise improvement in the quantity and quality of spending on welfare programmes and public works as is being done in almost all the 292 countries on the planet that have been hit terribly hard by the ongoing economic crisis, the worst of which is not yet over?

‘Green shoots’ will take time to bloom

Sept.14 : Is the world recession over? Are we witnessing what is often euphemistically described as the "green shoots of recovery" which are supposed to soon bloom into stalks, stems and flowers of prosperity? Is the worst really behind us and from now onwards, can the economic situation only get better? It is tempting to say "yes" to all these questions but the truth is that the near-term future is still fraught with uncertainty.

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