"Intellectual" Discussions

If our eminent intellectuals and politicians have taught us anything, it is that one can have opinions on anything. Introduction In this article, I shall look into the rising fuel prices and provide some rationale for the same. As mentioned above, I am no expert and my view can be considered amateurish at best.         Who is to be blamed for the rising fuel prices While people can debate whether 60% of the total taxes collected goes to the Center or States, it is quite evident that the blame for the rising prices should go to both. And seeing that the GST Council (in which only 33% of Voting Rights rests with Center) is not interested to take fuel into the ambit of GST, since that is one area along with Alocohol where states have the freedom to tinker taxes, it becomes fairly obvious that both Center and the respective state Governments are to be blamed for the same. How have the fuel prices increased over the long term I was able to source the below prices for...

If our eminent intellectuals and politicians have taught us anything, it is that one can have opinions on anything. Introduction This article is a continuation of the previous article on excess deaths in UP. In this article, I shall be looking at the excess deaths across the country as per National Health Mission's NHM's data. I have taken data from an article on IndiaSpend though my conclusions may be different. Kudos to the journalists who took this data out and more power to them.      As a caveat, I would be using rounded numbers for ease.  What is NHM? As per the HMIS website: National Health Mission (NHM)  is a flagship programme of the Government of India to address the health needs of under-served rural areas and health concerns of the urban poor population. Now coming to HMIS:  Health Management Information System (HMIS) is a Government to Government (G2G) web-based Monitoring Information System that has been put in place by Ministry of Health ...

  If our eminent intellectuals and politicians have taught us anything, it is that one can have opinions on anything. Introduction One of the oft repeated statements is that Demonetization has broken the backbone of the MSME sector (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) and has created a permanent damage in that sector. Considering that MSMEs contribute around 11 cr jobs, i.e. roughly 25% of the overall workforce. Hence, this claim should be strictly analyzed. In this article, we shall examine that claim from the following angles: Growth in MSME sector Jobs generated in FY 2016-17 in MSMEs Jobs generated in FY 2016-17 on an overall basis NPAs and growth in credit to MSMEs   Growth in MSME sector The latest MSME annual report from the ministry gives the following picture. As we can observe the growth of MSME sector’s gross-value added (GVA) has been in the range of 13% post the demonetization years and it has been around 11% during the year of demonetization and the yea...

If our eminent intellectuals and politicians have taught us anything, it is that one can have opinions on anything. In this article, we shall look into the excess deaths which took place in Uttar Pradesh till April 2021. As a caveat, I would be using rounded numbers for ease.  The inspiration for writing this article came from a news item published in Article-14 website which basically says that there were almost 1.97 lacs excess deaths in UP from July 2020 to April 2021. I was able to get the district-level monthly data for UP from GitHub. While the soundness of the analysis can be debated, they should be applauded to taking out this data. What is Excess Deaths    Now, excess deaths basically means the number of excess deaths which have occurred compared to a base period. E.g. Suppose in a place there were 100 deaths which happened in 2019 while in 2020 the figure was 125. So, the excess deaths are 25. During COVID-19, this excess death parameter has been used to specula...