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  • News & article

    Why demonetisation was a 'failure'

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 03/09/2018

    » The Indian central bank's final tally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 2016 demonetisation drive -- intended to take money derived from tax evasion out of circulation -- showed that 99.3% of outlawed high-value banknotes had been returned. That's a severe loss of face for officials, who had argued that holders of the cash would rather destroy it than return it to banks, providing a windfall for the government.

  • News & article

    India central bank passes buck back to government

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 04/08/2017

    » At their Wednesday meeting, the makers of India's monetary policy cut interest rates only slightly. They would seem to have had little choice -- but also little confidence that a deeper cut would jumpstart the Indian economy.

  • News & article

    The cost of a Modi election victory

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/12/2018

    » Many of us have long argued that, whatever its problems, India is one of the best long-term bets in the world for one simple reason: It has the sort of world-class institutions that can help build and sustain a genuine market economy. Sadly, many of those same institutions are being undermined by the country's own leaders -- most recently the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which Prime Minister Narendra Modi appear intent on subjugating as part of his bid for reelection. Of all people, Mr Modi should recognise that no election victory is worth giving up on India's best chance at becoming a world-beating economy.

  • News & article

    India needs more leaders like Manmohan Singh

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 10/04/2024

    » Almost 10 years after he gave way to Narendra Modi as prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh retired last week from public life. During his long career, Mr Singh also served as chief economist, central bank governor, finance minister, and foreign minister. Although he disappointed many who hoped he would accomplish more, India today owes much of its success to the reforms he implemented.

  • News & article

    Modi needs to have less power, not more of it

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 23/05/2019

    » India's long and exhausting general election is almost over. One of its casualties has been the reputation of the Election Commission of India, the constitutionally independent body that oversees the polls.

  • News & article

    US reign at World Bank must end now

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/02/2019

    » In many ways, David Malpass, whom US President Donald Trump nominated to head the World Bank, is an unsurprising choice. He's a senior Treasury official overseeing international affairs. Plus, his background absolutely screams "Trump nominee": He isn't a woman (Indra Nooyi, formerly of PepsiCo Inc, was being considered). He is an outspoken critic of the institution he is now to head (recall Scott Pruitt's tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency). And he has a controversial Wall Street background (he was chief economist at the ill-fated Bear Stearns), as well as some embarrassing calls in his past (he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2007 insisting that the housing market couldn't pull down the broader economy).

  • News & article

    China's Silk Road isn't so smooth

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 12/07/2018

    » You may not have noticed, what with the outbreak of trade war with the US and all, but China's economic diplomacy has had a bad few weeks. The country's flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is dealing with ever-greater resistance, slowing a momentum that once seemed unstoppable. In fact, I'd argue that the BRI is stalled.

  • News & article

    Poor need homes, not monuments

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/03/2018

    » Here in the City of London, you can step out of Bank underground station and walk a few hundred metres in any direction to see what Pritzker Prize-winning architects can do when they push themselves. At Bank intersection itself, breaking up the heavy imperial-era neoclassicism of Soane, Baker and Lutyens is James Stirling's Number One Poultry, whose postmodern curves softly echo the other buildings' grandiose lines. Stirling won the Pritzker, "architecture's Nobel Prize", in 1981; Number One Poultry, still controversial, is nevertheless now the youngest building to be officially protected, or "listed", by the British government.

  • News & article

    India's economy faces ominous 2018

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 09/01/2018

    » You'd think the Indian economy had returned to rosy health. It seems to have recovered from two enormous disruptions -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision just over a year ago to withdraw 86% of the currency in circulation, and the poorly-planned rollout in the middle of 2017 of a new goods-and-services tax. Exports are no longer declining, as they had for several quarters; indeed, for the last month that data is available, they rose 30%. The Purchasing Managers' Index expanded the fastest it has in five years. At least one international ratings agency has upgraded India's credit rating.

  • News & article

    India's banks need more than a bailout

    News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 27/10/2017

    » India has long been faced with a slow-motion bank crisis.

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