EcoPolitical

That Congress is a sole proprietorship has been made clear to us over decades, whether anecdotally or through various books authored by politicians/former bureaucrats/journalists. In fact in the recent Shahzad Poonawalla episode, a leaked tape suggests that Manish Tiwari referred to Congress as sole proprietorship in as many words. This has been achieved through the years allegedly by the subjugation of regional leadership by the ruling dynasty. The key goal being to centralize power in the dynasty's hands. The result of this has been the exodus by Congress stalwarts into other or new political outfits to pursue their own careers.  This page , lists over 40 breakaway parties (some of which may have merged back into Congress, or with other parties) from the Congress. Quite a dubious achievement for what calls itself as the Grand Old Party of India. The most notable break-away factions are Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress, Mufti...

Credit for all data and definitions related to the Legatum Prosperity Index goes to The Legatum Institute.The conclusions and correlations to government initiatives, are my own.  India has broken into the top hundred prosperous nations globally for the first time as per the Legatum Institute's 2017 Prosperity Index, coming in at rank 100. This is a meaningful improvement from the 115th place held five years ago in 2012. The Legatum Institute (LI), a global think-tank, recently released the 11th iteration of its Prosperity Index. This is a proprietary tool of the LI that looks at nations not just through the narrow prism of economic growth, but defines prosperity as a combination of both, wealth and well-being. It is measured using over a hundred variables classed into nine ‘pillars of prosperity’ viz. Economic quality, Business environment, Governance, Personal Freedom, Social Capital, Safety and Security, Education, Health, and the Natural Environment.  In macro ...

Shruti, Yukti, Anubhuti… The Bookkeeper would like to start off this post with a story. The story is of a man called Antony Fisher. Antony came from a family of migrants, mine owners, military men, and politicians. As those of his time with a robust pedigree, he joined Eton and later graduated from Cambridge University. After graduation he joined the Royal Air Force, where he was grounded following a flying accident. Antony’s weakness was his love of the periodical The Reader’s Digest. Every copy was read (and re-read) cover to cover, underlined, notes made thereon and many a times read out aloud to his family and friends. He had created a library of decades worth of the digest. In the April 1945 issue, The Reader’s Digest had published a condensed version of Austrian Economist Fredrich Hayek’s masterpiece, “The Road to Serfdom”. The Book was hugely popular and despite war time paper shortages had gone for several re-prints. Still, it was incredibly difficult to get a copy of the ...

The Bookkeeper's concerns on the state of the Indian banking system are now well known. In this post it has been attempted to quantify the issue and this analyst is pleased to note that the problem, while steep, a resolution is not a pipe dream. In policy, like in comedy, timing is everything. As such, steps taken to solve this problem will have to be swift to placate investors and industries that the problem is well in hand. The more drawn out the solution, the less potent the impact. For the puposes of this analysis, The Bookkeeper has painstakingly compiled the latest available data for 16 public sector banks (PSU banks) that account for ~90% of PSU Banking NPLs. It may be noted that NPLs in the PSU banking space account for ~90% of system NPLs. As mentioned in the last post, NPLs are primarily a PSU bank issue and it is there that a solution needs to be provided.  The Bookkeeper has assumed that Gross NPLs are fully recognised by now, but to be conservative ha...

The Bookkeeper is not insulated from the hysteria surrounding the state of the economy off late. As stated in my last article, the hullabaloo is a modicum of truth enveloped by apocalyptic Whatsapp forwards allegedly initiated by the liberal cabal. What is not helping is the insufficient counter from the Right Wing. When the counter argument does come, it hinges on the basis that the economic slowdown is a transitory impact of demonetization (DM). This commentator does not believe it is a transitory effect. This slowdown that has been brewing for a long time is systemic, as indicated by the consistent decline over the past several years in capacity utilization data. Source:https://www.cmie.com/kommon/bin/sr.php?kall=warticle&dt=2017-04-06%2017:38:57&msec=963&ver=pf The demand deficit, as falling capacity utilization suggests, is accompanied by a sharp contraction in the returns on capital employed (ROCE). The ROCE for a sample of Indian corporates has fallen...