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.

The focus on fossil fuel phase out and net zero target dates is geared to diverting attention from the responsibility of developed countries to provide higher climate finance flows to developing countries.

When BJP rule in the country is dead and gone, a good deal of the damage it has caused to the Indian society, polity and economy will no doubt be reversed. But there are at least two areas where such reversal will be difficult.

Without urgent and effective action on debt relief, fiscal pressures of debt service will cause low and middle income countries to regress on important social and economic indicators.

Coping with the adverse fallout of tighter monetary policy in the advanced economies will require developing country governments to shift from openness that increases their own vulnerability to a more creative and flexible approach that provides greater policy autonomy.

Economics is a subject where the ruling classes are forever trying to promote ideologically-motivated explanations in lieu of scientific ones. These explanations of course can be, and have been, fitted into an integrated totality of an alternative non-scientific theoretical structure that Marx had called "vulgar economy" as distinct from classical political economy.

A crucial component of the imperialist system is the colonisation of third world minds. It incapacitates critical thinking on how to solve social problems. A critical component of this colonisation is a narrative about social development that insulates colonialism or imperialism as causal factors.

UN Women has produced a clear and pervasive blueprint on the Feminist Plan for Sustainability and Social Justice, which puts much-needed flesh on the bare bones of a feminist approach to the economy, relevant to the contemporary world. Now the task is to do it.

The gendered division of labour in India creates much greater involvement in unpaid labour for women, which in turn has pervasive implications for their involvement in paid work. Indeed, the interlinkage between the two is so profound that it is impossible to understand trends in one without assessing trends in the other.

A challenge set by the Covid-19-induced economic crisis that would be difficult to address is the external debt crisis engulfing developing countries. While the G-20 with its Debt Service Suspension Initiative appeared to recognise the problem, the evidence indicates that the international community is unwilling to do what is needed.

The pandemic, just as any other crisis, has become a mechanism for the centralisation of capital arising from the inability of small wealth-holders to face stock-price collapses that the billionaires can face and the pooling together of vast masses of small capitals into a few large ones.

Amidst a dreadful pandemic, the medical staff of several government facilities are facing salary cut. As healthcare gets more privatized, the State's actions seem to compound the rapid increase in absolute poverty by keeping public health expenditure abysmally low.

In a three-dimensional crisis, of migrants, of pandemic and of the Indian Economy, the sudden visibiliy of migrants is due to the threat they pose to public health. What remains to be seen is whether the voice of the most vulnerable section will be heard or not.

Prof. Jayati Ghosh talks with Number13 about India’s response to the pandemic and its myriad impacts on society. It is not Covid-19 itself, but the highly classist government responses which have destroyed the economy, employment and livelihood of the country.

An account of hunger and destitution currently experienced by the mass of out-migrants in urban pockets, provide clear indications of a minimalist state in the process. Closer alliance of big capital and the ruling state further weaken the prevailing labour laws under the false pretext of attracting finance.

Disruptions caused by the lockdown have resulted in considerable additional economic burden on farmers because of higher costs, increased debt burden, inability to sell the produce at reasonable prices and crop losses. Yet the government’s response to such agricultural distress has been nothing short of a mockery till now.

Food and livelihood support must be provided to those who have been forced to bear the burden of the Covid-19 lockdown - and the Centre can easily afford it. Excuses based on public finances will not wash.

Varied intensity of new cases across states warrants a calibrated and state-specific lockdown exit strategy. Owing to disruption in every sector the country needs a doubling-down on food and cash transfers and an overhaul of fiscal and monetary strategy.

This article presents quantitative evidence from 1331 mandis to show that, over the first three weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown, a large number of agricultural markets were not operational, and in those markets that were operational, arrivals of key agricultural commodities fell very sharply. A disruption of 21 days in being able to sell their crops would have resulted in massive losses to farmers, in particular, to producers of perishable crops.

With no mechanisms in place to deal with the problem of migrant labourers and delivery issues, Modi government has almost made sure that even its paltry ration scheme does not reach the neediest.

Images of migrants walking hundreds of kilometers to return home are showing the extent of the government’s indifference to the lives of millions. The almost complete privatization of social reproduction in India has left its legacy in the large-scale malnourishment that makes our population uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus.

The relief package announced by the Finance Minister is a niggardly response to an unprecedented health, economic, and humanitarian crisis, severely affecting both demand and supply. The Centre does not seem interested in moving much beyond the lockdown.

It is clear from the current pandemic that the tenets of neo-liberalism must be reversed to introduce a comprehensive public healthcare system and a universal public distribution system; otherwise several precious lives will be lost.

Low allocations and specific policy statements in Budget 2020 point to greater privatisation and withdrawal of the state. The government fails to deliver for the country's poor and marginalized, a fact reflected clearly in reduced Revised Estimates across the board.

Labour force and work participation rates are low among young women across India, but the 2017-18 labour force survey shows that rates in almost all states have fallen even further, pointing to particularly adverse women labour market conditions.

To develop 'organic intellectuals" of a free India, higher education needs to be made completely free. But unless the tendency to appease the rich in the name of growth and to commoditise education are overcome, this seems like a distant dream.

Data from the recent survey show that health insurance coverage in India has not expanded at all between 2014 and 2018. Moreover, the benefits of health insurance disproportionately accrue to relatively richer households while the poor are left high and dry.

Recently released NSS data and administrative data on LPG connections show that most LPG connections provided under the PMUY may not have reached intended beneficiaries. Survey data confirms that half of the rural households continue to use firewood, chips, crop residue and dung cakes as the main fuel.

The NSS Report No 584, based on the 76th Round survey, calls the bluff peddled by the government on the achievements of Swachh Bharat Mission. In 2018, when the government was claiming that only 1.7 per cent rural households did not have latrines, the survey shows that it as many as 28.7 per cent.

"Global Hunger Index 2019 unambiguously concludes that India ranks lowest among all South Asian countries and that there has been an alarming increase in child "wasting". The government's callous approach to this has its roots in the institutionalized inequality of the Indian caste system."

The real intent of mainstream economics is to serve as a means of camouflaging imperialism. Prabhat Patnaik illustrates this with the examples of growth and trade theories.

Prabhat Patnaik explains that neo-liberal capitalism suffers from an inherent tendency towards stagnation because it no longer has the instruments used earlier to avoid slipping into recession and stagnation.

High inequality in the South Asian region is a crucial factor responsible for the region's poor performance on the SDGs.

In a period of upsurge of fascism, narrow nationalism and parochialism, Issa Shivji calls for the social responsibility of intellectuals to construct a counter-hegemonic project that would resonate with the lives of the vast majority.

Calls for a new development paradigm grow louder each day, especially in rapidly growing countries like India. Award-winning development economist Jayati Ghosh explores prospects for such a new model of equitable and sustainable development with Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute.

The latest initiative of the Government of India, the UID project, apparently appears to have many advantages for ordinary citizens, especially the poor. But there is a fundamental mistake in presuming that this will do away with corruption and leakages, because it misses out the fact that it is the power relations that enable and assist the pattern of corruption in India. Also the project can lead to an invasion of basic privacy and undesirable monitoring by the state.

The limitations of GDP and HDI that are used as standard measurements of growth and development might have prompted President Nicolas Sarkozy to set up a commission to look into alternative ways of measuring economic and social progress. However, the report of the commission, instead of making much headway, has added to the existing debate, thereby leaving some of the most crucial questions unanswered.

A report prepared by Indicus Analytics on the economic development of West Bengal tries to portray a dismal performance of the state with regard to growth, employment, poverty reduction, health etc. The article tries to question the findings of the report and argues that in many counts West Bengal has performed much better than the national average.

While India has one of the worst health indicators in the world, there is a paucity of ideas and initiatives to take care of the problem of health. The recent Report of the Independent Commission on Development and Health in India shows the imbalances with regard to health indicators in the country and makes important recommendations to fix the ailing public health system.

The author puts forward a new definition of underdevelopment in terms of lack of amenities for pedestrians in towns and cities. Although the problems of urban slums have been discussed in the context of rapid urbanisation, the importance of having safe, continuous and usable walking spaces, which are almost lacking in many urban sprawls across the developing world, seems to be missed out.

The financial tsunami that is now threatening to engulf many developing countries as well, makes all the more clear the dangers posed by unregulated financial markets. As is known, in addition to creating the conditions for greater fragility, financial liberalisation generates a bias towards deflationary macroeconomic policies and forces the state to adopt a deflationary stance to appease financial interests. In fact, financial liberalisation in developing countries has even worse consequences, because it can retard or even reverse the development.

The state of West Bengal has been the focus of national discussion because of the various implications of its proposed industrialisation policy. In this article the authors consider the background to this policy by analysing the most recent available evidence on growth trends in West Bengal.