Author: Ashok Nag

India’s Job Crisis- Myth or Reality?

Prof Arvind Panagariya  (AP) in his 2nd May article (here) in the Times of India edit page has argued that the number of new job seekers on an annual basis cannot be more than 7.8 million between 2016 and 2021. His article is a rebuttal to the claim made by India’s main opposition party that […]

Cryptocurrency Markets- concentrated and top heavy

Distrust in  fiat currency, controlled by a state, was one of the principal motivations in designing of  the Bitcoin protocol. It was designed  to be a decentralized system of creation of new money by a transparent computational algorithm.  Any person participating in the currency’s ecosystem can run this algorithm on a computer and generate new […]

The Next Battle- State versus Technology Giants

Two unrelated events hogged the headlines in the last month. On 22nd February Amazon became the third most valuable company in the world, overtaking Microsoft. On 25th February the official news agency Xinhua announced that the ruling communist party is proposing to remove the constitutional provision of “no more than two consecutive terms” for the […]

Trump Tariff- Keynes would have approved

The US government’s recent tariff imposition of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum imports from all countries except Canada and Mexico is a textbook example of economic policy making to serve narrow political interests. This article is not to examine the economic rationale of such a policy that its proponents have been offering. We […]

India’s Biggest Operational Risk Event

The PNB –Nirav Modi case is a text book case of an operational risk event. The fact of the case is now well known. The case revolves around letters of undertaking (LOU) issued by PNB (issuing bank) to overseas branches of many Indian banks.  An LOU is, in essence, an irrevocable bank guarantee issued by […]

Trillion Dollar Economy – no magic required

Reaching $ 5 trillion GDP benchmark is being projected as a landmark milestone for the Indian economy by many in the Government. The latest estimate puts the size of Indian economy, measured as GDP at current market prices, at $2.4 trillion. Does reaching $5 trillion mark reflect a significant achievement or is it really an […]

Corporatization of Nations

Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, the telecom arm of India’s largest company by market cap (NSE:RELIANCE), plans to create its own cryptocurrency called JioCoin. Supply chain management logistics and loyalty payment with JioCoin are amongst the envisaged uses of JioCoin. Worldwide, many large corporates have already started launching their own private cryptocurrency.  KFC, Burger King and […]

Central Bank Digital Currency -a Blueprint

eRupiah: RBI’s Virtual Cash Key words: Central Bank Digital Currency, public key-private key cryptography, Digital currency wallet, Corruption, Introduction: No currency has ever been used in the human history which did not have the stamp of an authority. Bitcoin is a medium of payment but it is not money for the same reason. Nonetheless, the […]

The centenary of Bolshevik Revolution and the fatal attraction of the concept of Class

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Communist Manifesto).   Communist parties everywhere consider this sentence written in 1848 by Marx and Engels as a well-established truth. However, it may also be considered as one of the greatest half-truths ever penned.  This manifesto was the inspiration of those who created, […]