Abhishek Anand

The good and simple tax? All eyes on GST Council's two high-rate slabs

This article visually summarises, in two tables, how not-simple the GST is, which leads to serious but under-recognised problems of arbitrary and coercive implementation

The stealth reform of India's electricity sector gains quiet traction

To ease utility opposition and win approval, renewables are framed as captive generation-meant to meet the developer's own energy needs

Policy choices that deepened the slowdown demand urgent course correction

What's troubling is that this slowdown is unfolding despite a broadly stable global economy-no financial crisis, no commodity shock

US President Donald Trump and trade policy: What should India do?

The country should convert the Trump threat to an India opportunity, re-embracing a more liberal trade regime as a way of reviving manufacturing output and exports

How quality control orders are crippling India's trade competitiveness

India's exporters are already under dire threat from the US. That only makes it more important that they should not be attacked from the domestic side. QCOs must be eliminated immediately

Why did RBI replace flexible exchange rate with de facto peg against dollar

The RBI must come out with an official explanation, but until it does, we can only guess. But there are a few reasonable hypotheses

Rupee defence strategy: Why RBI should embrace currency flexibility

India now holds about $650 billion in reserves, enough to finance nearly a year of imports. The problem is that global financial markets have even more firepower

The new RBI should revert to old rupee policy to address challenges

In our earlier piece in these pages, we highlighted the unwelcome consequences of the exchange rate policy adopted under the outgoing Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regime

India's manufacturing under-performance Part 1: New clue from multi-plants

One of the most intriguing and relatively undocumented developments of the last 20 yrs has been "multi-plants," whereby a single firm operates not one but multiple production facilities within a state

India's manufacturing under-performance Part 2: New clue from multi-plants

In multi-plant units, flexibility in hiring & firing labour comes from fact of having many plants. In single plants, there is no such flexibility, which renders use of contract labour more important

How is the Indian economy really doing?

All the heady optimism has overlooked the vulnerable state of the macro-economy. Caution, not complacency, is the more appropriate sentiment for now