
INDIA
COVID-19 second wave | Smash bureaucratic barriers, allow voluntary licensing for Covaxin immediately
Granting access to technology and know-how to Indian generic drug makers to produce Covaxin can quickly help fill the gaps in vaccine supplies.

CORONAVIRUS
COVID-19 | Are we staring at a potential vaccine supply crisis in the race to 1.4 billion doses?
The ability to carry out the world’s mass vaccination exercise in record time, will depend on keeping vaccine supplies of hundreds of millions of doses flowing uninterruptedly for months.

BUSINESS
Private sector needs to demolish vaccine hesitancy among employees and workers
Organisations understand the cost of another lockdown. It is showing up in their balance sheets. They can play a big role in avoiding a repeat

BUSINESS
In defence of small savings rate cuts
In its decision to reverse the cuts and maintain status quo on small saving deposit rates, the government has knowingly established a saver-borrower trade-off when, in the broader analysis, the lines between them are, at best, blurred

BUSINESS
Opinion: BJP banks on welfare and infra record in Assam to offset NRC, CAA backlash
State GDP growth matches national trend line, but high unemployment rates stand out as big worry

INDIA
COVID-19: Severe crackdown on Covidiots, massive scale-up in vaccination run-rate needed to contain second wave
Mass masking up, strict enforcement of COVID-19 protocols are the clearest ways to contain the spread. Otherwise, the cost for lives and livelihoods will be too prohibitive for the country to bear.

POLITICS
Opinion: Fear of being a minority at home defines Assam’s complex ethno-nationalistic politics
Elections aside, the lurking fear that illegal immigrants will determine the state’s political future continue to the occupy Assamese mindspace

INDIA
Opinion: Vaccine and mask hesitancy can scuttle India’s urgency towards rapid recovery
India cannot afford another hard stop to the economy. For the recovery to sustain, the top 15-20 cities that account for bulk of economic value added, need to keep their wheels running.

BUSINESS
Assam’s pumpkins may have reached Dubai, but state still lags far behind in export competitiveness
As Assam prepares for elections, a look at its economic indicators shows that it fared well in highway and rural road construction despite being ravaged by floods.

BUSINESS
Finance minister seeks to achieve more with less in Budget 2021
The confidence about the ability to spend is predicated upon a few expectations, including an ambitious disinvestment receipts and strong tax collections, which may require companies to outpace pre-COVID-19 levels of income and profitability

ECONOMY
Union Budget 2021 | FY22 nominal GDP growth pegged At 14.4%
The gross market borrowing for FY 2022 is pegged at Rs 12.06 lakh crore, while the net market borrowing (for FY22) is pegged at Rs 9.25 lakh crore.

BUSINESS
From saints to scientists, CEA Krishnamurthy Subramanian digs deep into mankind’s vast knowledge pool in Economic Survey 2021
Krishnamurthy V Subramanian, chief economic adviser (CEA), takes recourse to wisdom spread over millennia from the Upanishads to Aristotle, from Gandhi to Einstein, from Subhashita to Thiruvalluvar and Tagore, to reinforce policy choices.

BUSINESS
Economic Survey Explained| Growth, recovery, pain points, what to watch out for and other things you need to know
Last year it was about Thalinomics and being pro-business versus pro-crony. The year before it was about nudge theory and behavioural economics. Could it be about Covidonomics and farm reforms in this year's Economic Survey?

ECONOMY
Moneycontrol Manifesto: Time for Finance Minister to go for broke in Budget 2021
Budget 2021: Sitharaman faces a fiscal war that will require her to deploy all the policy arsenal — unorthodox and conventional — to win this fight.

BUSINESS
Analysis: GST collections at record high, but wait until January numbers to fit a trend
Wedding-related spending, year-end vacations despite restrictions and backlog of taxes may have aided December GST collections.

POLITICS
Farmers Protest: Why Congress was right in 2019, and is wrong in 2020
For too long, the story of Indian agriculture has been a tale of market distortions. These seemingly insurmountable hurdles frustrated successive policymakers whose repeated counsel to dismantle these barriers often ran into political resistance, like now