Few people in India know that we share a border of over 1,600 km with Myanmar (aka Burma), comparable in length with our borders with Bangladesh, China and Pakistan. The latter three are very much part of our daily diet of news and discussion. Almost every Indian is an expert on Pakistan. There is no lack of Bangladesh analysts. And even the tribe of China watchers is on the rise.

Shankar Acharya: Myanmar - India's neglected neighbour

Business Standard

December is the month when columnists tend to offer their forecasts for the new year ahead or review the year gone by. I will do both but over a much longer time frame than a year. As I ponder over the wreckage of our growth and development aspirations in the past two years, I am struck by the path-dependence of our economic policies and performance.

Shankar Acharya: Gandhian legacies


Last week, on October 29, the finance minister issued a statement laying out the government&rsquo;s road map for fiscal consolidation during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan, 2012/13-2016/17. Specifically, he committed that the fiscal deficit of the central government would be held at 5.3 per cent of GDP in 2012/13 and then reduced gradually to 4.8 per cent in 2013/14, 4.2 per cent in 2014/15, 3.6 per cent in 2015/16 and, finally, three per cent in 2016/17. Amongst that tiny fraction of

Shankar Acharya: Fiscal consolidation - how real?

Four weeks ago, on September 13, this newspaper published my column entitled &ldquo;Macro signals flashing red&rdquo;, which highlighted the continuing and dangerous deterioration in our economic performance with respect to economic growth, external sector imbalances, fiscal deficit, financial sector stresses, inflation and employment.

Shankar Acharya: Reforms resurgent?

It is common knowledge that the Indian economy has not just been doing badly for over a year but is actually stumbling towards a major economic crisis. The government seems incapable of remedial action, punch-drunk by successive scams, political weakness, internal incoherence and perhaps even sheer incompetence. It&rsquo;s beginning to feel like a classic tragedy where a nasty end seems increasingly unavoidable. All that an external observer can do is record the painful journey.

Shankar Acharya: Macro signals flashing red

At the beginning of this year, I had pointed out that because of the United Progressive Alliance government&rsquo;s prolonged lack of progress on economic reforms, its continued fiscal profligacy, a series of damaging decisions injurious to the investment climate and a weak and uncertain global economic environment, a number of crises were building (&ldquo;Roosting chickens, building crises&rdquo;, Business Standard, January 12, 2012).

Shankar Acharya: Crises still building

Sixty years ago, Myanmar (then Burma) was one of the economically better off countries in Asia, with abundant and valuable resources of forests, gems and minerals, major exports of rice from the fertile Irrawaddy delta and an average income higher than nearly all Asian nations other than Japan.

Shankar Acharya: Myanmar's economy - some glimpses

Since last August the Indian rupee has been volatile and weak. The rupee-dollar parity dropped from 44-46 last summer to a low of 54.2 in mid-December. Some regulatory measures and substantial market intervention by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in December and January (about $8 billion of dollar sales each month) restored the rate to around 50 by end January.

Shankar Acharya: The exchange rate: economics bites back

What a fall it has been my countrymen (and women). Four years ago India was riding high. We had just completed five unprecedented years of nine per cent average annual growth. Poverty, we now know, had declined substantially, though that seems to displease most of our left-leaning political class (perhaps they think of the poor as vote banks?). Inflation had averaged hardly five per cent a year.

Shankar Acharya: The unravelling


he setting: India&rsquo;s annualised economic growth rate has plummeted to six per cent in the final quarter of 2011, inflation is still stubbornly high, the current account deficit in the balance of payments exceeds 3.5 per cent of GDP, external debt is at a record high, the central government&rsquo;s fiscal deficit in the current year will exceed the budgeted level by at least Rs 1 lakh crore, the aggregate investment rate in 2011-12 is officially estimated to have dropped by four per cent

Shankar Acharya: Hope vs experience

Nearly eight years have passed since the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh came to power. That&rsquo;s a long time in politics, long enough for many of the politically expedient sins of commission and omission to yield their unfortunate consequences. In the economic domain the chickens have begun to come home to roost over the past year.

Shankar Acharya