Economy & Equity

Aqal Ki Baat : Nikhil Dey- State of Various Schemes in India https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJKfbgfHccY Anhad India Apr 19, 2019
Aqal Ki Baat is a voluntary effort by a small group of friends to sensitize the citizens on various issues of concern. In times when national media has totally compromised and lies are propagated and repeated a 100 times, when all efforts are made to ensure that people do not question and do not think, Aqal Ki Baat is a small effort to question the one sided narrative. Please do watch, hear and share with friends.
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Montek Singh Ahluwalia on liberalisation and welfare @Kunal Kamra Teaser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5VhMr46JSU Montek Singh saying that IMF/World Bank did not insist that India cuts Welfare. Apparently the condition was that India should raise it by Taxes or cutting other expenditure.  Sep 16, 2022 the full episode behind the paywall: https://bit.ly/BiTEp2

Sado-Monetarism  The Role of the Federal Reserve System in Keeping Wages Low https://monthlyreview.org/2012/04/01/sado-monetarism/
by Michael Perelman Neoclassical economists are concerned about the workers’ transactions with capital, but they care little about the workers themselves or their working conditions. Workers merely accept a wage bargain, go to work, and finally collect a wage.

The Federal Reserve serves the needs of the powerful. Its role is to protect capital against the interests of labor. In order to maintain labor discipline, the Federal Reserve Board is entrusted with the task of maintaining a level of unemployment high enough to keep workers fearful of losing their jobs. Workers’ acceptance of mediocre jobs at modest wages paid handsome dividends for business, creating more demand (through debt), while making workers even more fearful of losing their jobs. In addition, workers’ insecurity also meant that they were less likely to quit in search of better employment, allowing employers to avoid the costs of recruiting and retraining replacement workers. Perhaps best of all, employers could enjoy this bounty without having to call upon the Federal Reserve to slow down the economy.

https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_511.pdf The Fed’s Real Reaction Function Monetary Policy, Inflation, Unemployment, Inequality—and Presidential Politics* by James K. Galbraith Olivier Giovannoni Ann J. Russo  August 2007  Does monetary policy influence inequality? More specifically, does information contained in the term structure of interest rates extend beyond inflation and unemployment to a measure of inequality in earnings? The answer is that it does.  

Agnipath Is A Marketing Trick In Which Job Destruction Is Being Sold As Job Creation https://thewire.in/government/agnipath-scheme-job-destruction-creation-modi-government   Even though the larger economic motives and social imperatives behind the Agnipath project have not been understood in its entirety by the larger public, the impact of the scheme which bars candidates above 21 years and renders 75% of recruits jobless after four years without pension benefits has triggered the anger of those who were desperately waiting for the call for recruitment. 

The Agnipath shock comes months after the Railway Recruitment Board changed its eligibility qualification, leaving lakhs of aspirants high and dry. With the agricultural and unorganised sectors, which provide employment to the stay-behinds, heavily hit by demonetisation, goods and services tax and later COVID-19 and Modi’s lockdowns, north Indian youth pinned all their hopes on army recruitment. But Agnipath has come as a bolt from the blue.

India is facing a great unemployment crisis and Modi has aggravated the problem with his disastrous economic policies and now his neoliberal recruitment policies.

Comment by S Dutta: Which "India" is he talking about ? Somewhere in Latin America ?

All available data shows "per capita income" of India was around 135,000--149,000 py in 2019-2020. That's also supported by outside estimates of about $1950/per capita per annum.
Did COVID push that up to INR 203,500 by some Modi magic !

And -- "Bottom 50%" of Indians are 700 million, not 600 million !
And - bottom 50% has average income of 4,500 pm means what ? Per capita or per family ? If it's per capita, as indicated, survival won't be this stressed.

https://wid.world/country/india/ 

India amongst the most unequal countries in the world, says report https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/india-amongst-the-most-unequal-countries-in-the-world-report/articleshow/88141807.cms