BUSINESS
To restrict PC imports is to restrict India's economic future
The manufacturing value-add in computers would be a tiny fraction of the value added in services compromised by restricted IT imports. For a few million dollars’ worth of forced manufacture, should India make life difficult for a trillion-dollar technology and technology enabled services industry?
BUSINESS
Gaming companies should challenge the GST Council's decision
The failure to distinguish between games of chance and games of skill go against several Supreme Court judgments on the subject. This legal clarity is needed to persuade state governments who see the moral turpitude of gambling in all online games
BUSINESS
Policy inaction by the RBI is hiking real rates, growth calls for lower rates
The desired response from the RBI in an environment of falling inflation and a declining dollar index is to slash rates, not hold them steady
BUSINESS
How to burnish AT1 bonds that have lost their sheen
The way to make AT1 bonds attractive again is to provide clarity as to their insurance-linked role that sets them apart from pure debt, revert to valuation as per the time period of call options, and vastly improve banking supervision via enhanced management of banking data
BUSINESS
Karnataka High Court provides clarity on taxing online games
“The contention that it matters not whether the player or some third person is staking money is not apposite considering the fact that the person who stakes does so based on the confidence that he has on his skills and not his luck.”
BUSINESS
AT1 bonds need a name change. Call them FinCat bonds, catastrophe bonds for the financial sector
Recognise AT1 bonds as insurance, rather than pure debt. Once AT1 bonds are understood as insurance by a bank that is still a going concern, against a calamitous loss, the expectation that they should be bailed in only after equity is written off would disappear
BUSINESS
Time to bury the neoliberal bogeyman
If a spectre haunts the world, it is the spectre of state activism, not the neoliberal monster of Leftist fantasy
BUSINESS
Immigration the key to lower inflation in labour-scarce rich world
Looser immigration policies would let in additional workers at all skill levels to loosen the labour supply in the rich world, allowing flexible labour markets to complement interest rates as they soar to strike down inflation
BUSINESS
Pharma exports as weapons of mass destruction
Given the potential of rogue pharma exporters to kill off Indian pharmaceutical companies’ global potential, pharma exports must be brought under an export control regime of the kind used to regulate WMDs
ECONOMY
Budget 2023: Build new cities, it is what our future demands of the present
By 2051, India may have an additional 335 million urban population. Several new cities will be needed to settle them
BUSINESS
Budget 2023: The case for lowering tax rates
The Budget should opt for uniform rates of import duty and low, enforceable rates of tax on income in the hands of earners and sophisticated mining of data to widen the tax base
BUSINESS
Is negotiated peace round the corner in Ukraine?
European solidarity must collapse, in the face of unrelenting energy shortage in the midst of a cold winter, for peace to break out
BUSINESS
Time for a BRICS reinsurance company
The sensible thing for India to do is to keep buying Russian crude, set up a BRICS Re to offer reinsurance to those who insure the safe passage of Russian crude without price caps to wherever it is welcome, and to keep engaging both sides in the Ukraine war
BUSINESS
FTX Debacle | Cryptocurrencies will survive, but only robust ones, and subject to regulation
Will cryptocurrencies continue as totally decentralised finance, immune to regulation and government diktat? Where does this leave people who have invested in NFTs?
BUSINESS
A message RBI can take from Bank of England
The Bank of England is of the view that further sharp increases in policy rates could do more damage than good. The RBI’s MPC will do well to bear this in mind
BUSINESS
The language of intermediation matters
The Union government should abandon its Hindi-centric project and, instead, adopt the multilingual policy it is now obliging IT intermediaries to follow
BUSINESS
What Rishi Sunak’s rise can tell Congress in India
Own up Jawaharlal Nehru’s role as the builder of Independent India’s capitalism, instead of persisting with the once-expedient rhetoric of socialism
BUSINESS
Women unravel authoritarian power in Iran and the US
Women’s struggles for the right to autonomy on par with men are evolving into a potent political force in the world today, a force for good
BUSINESS
A World Bank warning that calls for action
The report calls for some very delicately-balanced trade-offs in emerging markets and developing economies between fighting inflation and preserving growth
BUSINESS
The world six months into the war in Ukraine
Europe is being forced to stare at the dark underbelly of the energy reality even as that regular climate offender, the US, is putting in place a meaningful climate action plan, with funding to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars
BUSINESS
RBI | Why should the central bank waste energies on low-hanging fruit, when the sky beckons?
It is simple logic that the banks, the RBI and the government should together foot the cost of electronic transfer of funds, and spare those making or receiving payments any of the cost
POLITICS
Freebie Politics | Enlightenment is when the polity realises that there are no free lunches
The only antidote to the politics of freebies is a polity that understands that it, ultimately, pays for that seemingly free lunch — a polity with a democratic sensibility
BUSINESS
India must extend a rupee line of credit to Sri Lanka
A rupee line of credit would give immediate relief to Sri Lankans and their interim president, while letting India help the island nation without depleting its own dollar reserves
BUSINESS
Ukraine War | A trade-off between Western losses and developing world misery
The war in Ukraine is a war between US-led allies and Russia, not a war over any principle of sovereignty or democracy
