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Sukumar Muralidharan

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The economist said discrepancies in the data have been large between the expenditure side and the production side.

India’s real growth may be 2.5–3 per cent, not 8 per cent: Arun Kumar

The economist and author says India cannot credibly be called the fastest-growing economy with unreliable data.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Dec 08, 2025
The six “apostles”: (from left to right) Manmohan Singh, Rehman Sobhan, Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati; Mahbub ul Haq; and Lal Jayawardena. 

The Cambridge six

Engerman’s Apostles of Development traces how six South Asian economists carried Cambridge ideas into the tangled politics of growth and inequality.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Sep 09, 2025
Raghuram Rajan, Former Governor, RBI. Calling for an honest reassessment of India’s development path, Rajan urges transparency, stronger competition, and a renewed focus on capabilities over slogans.

To get rich before we get old, the pace of growth has to increase: Raghuram Rajan

The former RBI Governor explains why India must rethink its growth model and focus on skills, services, and strategic investment.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Jul 22, 2025
A still from the film Parzania (2007), directed by Rahul Dholakia. Starring Naseeruddin Shah and Sarika, the film was inspired by the true story of a ten-year-old Parsi boy who disappeared after the Gulbarg Society massacre, in which 69 people were killed and which was one of many events in the communal riots in Gujarat in February-March 2002.

Can cinema do justice to justice?

Oishik Sircar’s book probes how three films frame the Gujarat pogrom—less as closure, more as commentary on justice, memory, and what gets silenced.
Sukumar Muralidharan
May 06, 2025
October 1929: Traders rushing in Wall Street as the New York Stock Exchange crashed, sparking a run on banks that spread across the country. October 1929 was the beginning of the 1929 Stock Market Crash.

Ruchir Sharma’s analysis of capitalism’s flaws overlooks political solutions

While Sharma’s economic diagnosis is sharp, he misses the mark by ignoring the political dimensions necessary to resolve capitalism’s global crisis.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Sep 04, 2024
A food stall in Mumbai advertises the use of digital payment systems.

Indian economy’s ‘K-shaped’ recovery shows the rich are thriving, while the poor struggle

The Modi government’s claims of a new growth momentum are contradicted by rising inequality and stagnant living standards for the majority.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Nov 30, 2023
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Churu, Rajasthan, on February 26, 2019., hours after reports came in of IAF fighter jets destroying terror camps across the border in Pakistan. The country, he said, was safe in his hands.

That bedrock of feelings: Review of ‘Politics, Ethics and Emotions in New India’ by Ajay Gudavarthy

New India, this book says, is a mixture of immiscible opposites achieved through an emotional churn.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Jun 29, 2023
Gautam Adani.

End of a roll: The curious rise and fall of Adani stocks

The manufactured anger against Hindenburg for revelations about Adani share prices is quite strange.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Feb 22, 2023
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar responding to the opposition on the Chhapra hooch tragedy in the Assembly in Patna on December 14.

Bihar, Nitish Kumar, and the prohibition debate

Curtailing basic liberties on a presumption that individuals tend to abuse them is self-defeating.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Dec 29, 2022
About a month after the BJP government revoked the special status granted to Jammu and Kashmir under the Constitution, CRPF personnel patrolling a deserted street in Srinagar, in September 2019.  

How the vision of ‘One Nation’ suppresses alternative voices

The unity of the nation is now identified with the internal cohesion of the ruling party.
Sukumar Muralidharan
Jul 10, 2022
Sumitra Das inside her kirana shop in Talit Daspara, Bardhaman, West Bengal, which she had to shut down as she could not afford to buy the stock anymore. From the last quarter of 2021 onwards, there has been a visible slump in the rural demand for both durables and items of mass consumption.

Expert Explains: What’s the remedy against rising inflation?

Growth is not the panacea it is held out to be because the truth is a severely skewed distribution of wealth and resources is counteracting all growth
Sukumar Muralidharan
May 30, 2022
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