I AND MY WORDS

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...

There is too much deliberation and discussion on what to make of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Indian political scenario. The problem with this discussion for me lies at several loose ends, none of which are tight enough to enable the curious onlooker any sense of the party and its moorings. My own two bits of 'wisdom' stem from distant viewing of the phenomenon. I may certainly be wrong; I may be right. But it is my submission that when seen from these perspectives, AAP and what it stands for can be perhaps better understood. AAP behaves not so much as a political party as it does like a Non Governmental Organization (NGO). This stems from the fact that most people who lead it have been associated with think tanks, NGOs and academia, and a major part of the base comprises of volunteers who have spared time for several causes close to their hearts. Even the campaign for Delhi's assembly elections ran more in the mode of a social enterprise networking with a large ma...