Vivek's Commentary

Karnataka state has witnessed the 6 president's rule. The formation of Karnataka government is highly influenced by Central government. Another interesting thing about Karnataka State is that the state can't digest the coalition government. Coalition government in Karnataka were unable to complete the whole term. Let us see some interesting things. I will divide these article into 3 parts - 1) Same party is ruling at State and Center but Something goes wrong with Party at Center - Karnataka State faced first president's rule in 1971 from 19th March 1971 to 20th March 1972. Veerendra Patil from Congress was Chief Minister of Karnataka, but Congress split in 1969 and Veerendra Patil preferred to be with Congress (O) and therefore government lost the majority in 1971. 2) One party is ruling at state and another party is ruling at Center - In 1977, Karnataka state witness second state emergency. In 1977, Janata alliance managed to win the loksabha election. Janata alli...

The N K Singh's 15th Finance Commission has started the debate over the population criteria. But we are ignoring one thing. Are states using this fund properly? Let's take two states - Gujarat and Maharashtra Before 2017, there was two types of expenditure - planned and non-planned. Planned expenditure of states is the expenditure that comes under center's advances to states for their plan. The expenditure other than planned expenditure i.e. spending to maintain the law and order i.e. spending on police, government offices and departments etc is known as non-planned expenditure. Now let's have a look of planned expenditure of Maharashtra state. Data Source - An author uses data from Reserve Bank of India for given analysis Budget estimates are predicted expenditure based on the analysis of pre-budget trends. Revised estimates are a mid-year estimates based on six months actual trends and predicted expenditure for the balance six months. Accounts are actua...

On 20th March, Indian government in their "HISTORICAL DECISION" granted the autonomy to 60 educational institution (5 Central Universities, 21 State Universities, 24 Deemed Universities, 2 Private Universities and 8 Colleges). Source - Public information bureau of India Human Resource Minister Shri Prakash Javadekar said that UGC will have control over the given institutions but these institutions will have freedom to start the new courses, off campus centers, skill-related courses, research parks and other new academic programs. They are free to hire the foreign faculty and enter into academic collaborations. This looks like India will witness the high quality education, India will witness the research based education etc etc. But I don't think so. Anyway we already have 74 autonomous institutions (This doesn't include the institutions and colleges which are grated the partial autonomy or autonomy for specific department.). But still we haven't seen any majo...

There is tremendous reduction in the power of BJP in Gujarat. One can easily say that by just observing the seats won by BJP. But I am going to use some concentration index to show that. In market, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) is used to measure the monopoly power. The range of HHI is between 0 and 1. If HHI is 1 then there is monopoly i.e. one firm has absolute power in given market and if HHI is zero then it means no one has control over the market. HHI is calculated by adding the square of market shares of firms. Now I am going to use this HHI index in political economy to measure the concentration of power. After that I will use Effective Number of Political Parties which is proposed by Laakso, M., & Taagepera, R. (1979) to measure the degree of coalition. (Data source – Election Commission of India)  Now let’s see the HHI and ENP.  (Index has been calculated) Let me explain the trends. Here HHI is reduced from 0.48 to 0.29 in last 15 years. ...

Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt. - Benjamin Franklin   We are going to bed without dinner but still debt is rising. Our outstanding liability is around 67% of total GDP. Fiscal deficit at the end of August was around 96% of the budget estimate for 2017-18. Then one important question arises – ‘Are we moving towards 1991?’ Let’s see..  (Source - Data from Reserve Bank of India is used for calculation) Fiscal deficit is obviously very high. For this time, I am taking absolute figure (not in percentage). Both states and central fiscal deficit is very higher than 1990s Fiscal deficit. Total outstanding liability is rapidly increasing and very high compare to 1991. Revenue deficit is also higher than 1991 in absolute terms.  (Source - Data from Reserve Bank of India is used for calculation)  So does it mean we are very close to crisis? Let’s see another side of picture.. Foreign reserves are increasing and ...

Our system - of debt-fueled economic growth, of ineffective democracy, of overloading planet Earth - is eating itself alive - Paul Gilding. Forget about debt-fueled ECONOMIC GROWTH, few Indian states have only growth in their OUTSTANDING LIABILITIES. We talk too much about outstanding liabilities and Fiscal Deficit of Central government. But we can’t ignore the financial health of Indian states. Andhra Pradesh is continuously borrowing from markets. West Bengal is new competitor for Andhra Pradesh. One might say that revenue deficit or fiscal deficit is under control or government is taking serious steps to control their deficits. But these deficit can't be financed by borrowing. If it is a case then we should start thinking about outstanding liabilities of Indian states. (Source -  Reserve Bank of India - Handbook of Statistics on Indian States.  To make it simple, data selection is restricted to 2013 as Telangana state is created in 2014 and Andhra Pradesh is ve...

Maratha community is protesting since last few years. One thing we should appreciate that the protests were peaceful. But I disagree with the concept of this protest. My relatives and friends who are part of this silent protest march might not like this opinion but this is what I think.  In democracy everyone has right to protest. I am not against any protest march. Everyone should express his/her disagreements. People from Maratha community are also suffering from problems like poverty, unemployment etc. These problems come regardless your caste. (But what about social discrimination? In Maharashtra, (so called progressive state) we have seen honor killings. Right now I don’t want to get into this and I won’t talk about caste discrimination). But certain things are difficult to understand. One thing which I observe is that the name of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj has been used intensively. Protestors were saying that Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was their ancestral. It shows t...