Post the pandemic, the world seems to be back on a high-inflation path, and many geographies in the advanced world have started witnessing inflation rates that were prevalent in the early 1970s.
Contextualising Educational Studies in India: Research, Policy and Practices edited by Pradeep Kumar Choudhury and Suresh Babu G S, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2022; pp xv + 228, `995.
This article investigates the impact of COVID-19 on the banking sector through the trend analysis of return on assets and return on equity of the scheduled commercial banks. It covers both the pre- and post-lockdown periods. The results suggest that the governmental measures are helping ameliorate situations of bad quality loans and will improve future prospects of the banking industry.
Vodafone Idea, a key telecom player in India, risks closure thanks to its massive commercial debt and the substantial levies and penalties it owes to the government. Its exit would weaken competition and hurt exchequer revenues. The government has offered to accept equity in Vodafone Idea as part payment to mitigate this risk. With its existing equity in BSNL/MTNL, the government faces a serious confl ict of interest through ownership in competing companies. Merging these companies would help them and promote policy objectives better.
The remaining carbon budget available to the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius or to “well below 2°C” very small and is being rapidly depleted. The year 2021 has witnessed a flurry of pledges by countries to achieve net-zero emissions around the second half of this century. But the analysis shows the pledges of Annex-I parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be highly inadequate to limit the temperature rise to below 1.5°C. In this context, this paper reviews India’s climate change mitigation efforts and policies over the last decade and assesses the recently declared net-zero emissions pledge against a range of illustrative emissions pathways and the implied cumulative emissions of these pathways. The ambition of India’s pledge is assessed, with a discussion of the challenges that lie ahead for India’s energy sector.
The shifting discourses on the purposes, objectives, and forms of India’s environment regulations are discussed within the broader domestic, political, and economic contexts. The environmental law reforms are being designed to legalise and protect financial investments in projects, irrespective of their environmental performance, and to monetise their impacts and damages.
Unresolved agrarian question, slow pace of industrial development and distorted economic growth of the service sector, have all led to the nature of economic development that is not symmetrical or equally poised with political democracy and rights. As long as capitalism in India remains backward to a large extent, in agriculture and industry, and as long as the distorted development continues, we will be stuck with the impasse of backward-looking nationalism and authoritarian populism. Current impasse is a product of achieving political modernity and a superstructure without its accompanying economic basis.
Looking at existing policy instruments and goals, and the economic and social outcomes they promise to deliver, it is argued that majoritarian politics and social and cultural outcomes are not part of fringe thinking. The politics of hate actually works to build a consensus for ruling class economics. It is not surprising, therefore, that the only "nationalist outlook" of our times is to stand firmly behind the policy programme for the global investor.
It is generally believed that India is doing far better than most emerging market economies in these times of global economic turmoil. Emerging markets are facing capital flight, with large-scale outflows, especially since the second half of 2015, with the trend expected to continue in 2016. India has been less affected than others, but is clearly vulnerable due to the large number of Indian firms that are exposed to external borrowings, a weak rupee, a year or more of declining merchandise exports, falling corporate profitability, and stressed corporate balance sheets.
The growth of the financial market in 2002-03 was much more marked in the secondary market than in the primary segment. Turnover in all three components of the secondary market - equity, debt and forex - continued to grow apace.
