I AND MY WORDS

Courtesy: Times of India Yes, you read it right. There is disaffection in the Indian middle class right now with the Narendra Modi government. This is not about tier I wine sipping elite intellectuals. This is about the great Indian middle class that has suffered immensely due to the COVID lockdown. This is the great Indian middle class of tier II, tier III and tier IV, living across India, many of whose children were working in tier I cities but lost their jobs and came back to sit idle at home. This is the great Indian middle class that forms a significant skilled migrant set that is increasingly getting  frustrated at the lack of job opportunities in the job market. This is the great Indian middle class that pays taxes across all hues but does not count as a significant voter base any more for the BJP. There is this sentiment among several well wishers turned haters that the BJP rose on the backs of the Indian middle class only to trample its spine and move forward to ensure tha...

Courtesy: India TV There has been a lot of criticism about the Election Commission's handling of the COVID pandemic. One would imply that the cases have exploded as a result of the electioneering in India. There is no logic behind this argument for a simple reason - this logic flies in the face of the fact that states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Punjab should not have been facing any outbreaks of the kind that are reeling under, given there are no elections there. Even if one were to believe that logic, the numbers should have actually reflected the spike within a month's time. The reason behind the month's timeline is that the cases take at least a week to surface and another two to three weeks to be clear from the human system for the survivors and mildly affected people. Assuming that a person was affected within seven days of attending a rally or a roadshow, the numbers should start reflecting in the moving average.  When one takes up the data for t...

Courtesy: The Hindu COVID-19 has impacted economies across the world, forcing people to seek government assistance in times of desperation. India already announced the PM Garib Kalyan Package and there are talks of a package to help the besieged Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. Reserved Bank of India (RBI) too has announced a host of measures along with Ministry of Finance to ease compliance issues and infuse liquidity in the hands of the people to tide over the crisis.  Interestingly in India, a debate has also started on the very need of a stimulus package given its potential impact on fiscal credit, led by Ila Patnaik and Haseeb Drabu. This section is advocating that instead of fiscal package, states should rather be allowed to raise funds on their own, an ability they lost with the implementation of the GST. While the Indian government is working towards resolving the economic and human crisis in the most appropriate manner, we take a look at ot...