Somesh Jha is a business journalist who reports on government policies from New Delhi, with specialisation in landing scoops, deep investigative work and breaking news. During his professional journey of over eight years, he has worn multiple hats – covering politics for a financial daily, reporting on economy for a general newspaper and trying hands in digital journalism for a multimedia platform. His investigations on 'politics of data in India' got international recognition after he blew the lid off official survey reports, withheld by the Indian government, which showed record unemployment rate and a possible rise in poverty levels.
Central banks have begun rolling back pandemic-year interest rates cuts that fueled inflation but the RBI hasn’t. While the RBI claims it needs low rates to spur growth, the central bank is helping the cash-starved government keep its borrowing cost low by not hiking the rates.
The Modi government let Shaktikanta Das-led RBI evade accountability for breaching the inflation target, documents show. The govt gave the central bank a leeway by labelling its own inflation data spurious, ignoring statistics ministry’s objections.
A trove of official documents obtained by The Reporters’ Collective reveals that a year after the Narendra Modi-led government came to power in 2014, it accused the Reserve Bank of India of setting interest rates high to benefit developed countries and sought a probe into it. This was first among a series of attempts by the government to nibble away RBI’s independence in setting the country’s monetary policy aimed at keeping prices low.
In the investigative series on India’s monetary policy, The Collective found evidence of Modi government’s attempts at making inroads into the RBI and nibble away its independence in setting the country’s monetary policy, which primarily aims to keep prices stable. The series spotlights how the same government that brought in the independent monetary policy framework defeated its key goals of transparency and accountability.
Nirmala Sitharaman's old friends were surprised at her decision to join the BJP over a decade ago as they remembered her as a hardcore Freethinker, a student union that took pride in itself on its lack of dogmatism, at the JNU. She moved up the ladder by making the right friends. Sitharaman is now employing the skills that stood her in good stead, as the BJP's national spokesperson, to deflect criticism about the worsening state of the Indian economy during her stint as the finance minister.