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Xi Jinping is a Chinese politician and the President of the People's Republic of China. He is also the current General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission.Born in Beijing in 1953, Xi Jinping is the son of revolutionary veteran Xi Zhongxun, one of the Communist Party's founding fathers.After ascending to the presidency, Jinping was quick to see the benefits of privatization-friendly reforms. He has a surprisingly assertive public profile, even allowing the state media to publish a day-in-the-life account of his workday. Jinping has fought harder than his predecessors against corruption and in favor of greater economic and security alliances. He has also championed a more assertive foreign policy, particularly with regards to China–Japan relations, China's claims in the South China Sea, and its role as a leading advocate of free trade and globalization.

Sushma Swaraj is one of the four women politicians who dominate the Indian politics currently. Apart from Swaraj, the other three women in this quartet are: Ex-President Pratibha Patil, UPA chief Sonia Gandhi and Ex-Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. Swaraj, BJP MP from Vidisha, is the leader of the opposition in the 15th Lok Sabha. Swaraj is one of the few Indian politicians who are on social networking site Twitter. Recently, Swaraj's tweet of accepting PM Manmohan Singh's explanation on the CVC fiasco created a kind of flutter in BJP. Born in Haryana, Sushma began her political career as a student leader and became a member of the Haryana assembly for the first time in 1977. In 1980, Swaraj joined the BJP and during the Ram temple movement, along with Uma Bharti, became the face of women power in the BJP. In 1990, she was elected to the Rajya Sabha and in 1996, she became a Lok Sabha member, from South Delhi. In 1998, Swaraj quit the Union Cabinet of AB Vajpayee and became the f...

Sonia Gandhi, born as Edvige Antonia Albina Màino, is an Italy-born Indian politician and the current leader of the  Indian National Congress . She is the widow of  Rajiv Gandhi , former prime minister of India, and mother of Indian oliticians  Rahul  and  Priyanka Gandhi . She joined the Congress party and ventured into the Indian politics post her husband’s assassination. After much compulsion from the party members, Sonia finally entered politics in 1997 and became the party president in the year 1998. She holds the record of being longest Congress president, as many as 10 years at one go. In 2004 when the party won the General Elections, Sonia denied to take up the post of the prime minister and instead put forward  Manmohan Singh ’s name for the job.

Rajiv Gandhi, officially known as Rajiv Ratna Gandhi, was India’s sixth Prime Minister. He took the post after his mother  Indira Gandhi ’s assassination and held it from 1984 to 1989. Rajiv was the scion of India’s one of the most powerful families, the Nehru-Gandhi family. Thus, he got into politics and associated with the Congress party eventually. Rajiv married  Sonia Gandhi  in 1968 and the couple has two children  Rahul  and  Priyanka Gandhi .  During his tenure as the PM, Rajiv had a controversy-stricken period journey. Among others, the greatest crisis was caused by the Shah Bano case and  Bhopal disaster . His support to reverse the coup in Maldives in the year 1988 infuriated the Tamil militants, PLOTE and LTTE.  In 1991 he was assassinated by a suicide bomber from the LTTE militant group while he was campaigning for elections. In the same year, Government of India posthumously awarded Rajiv Gandhi with the country's highest civilian award - Bharat Ratna.

Rahul Gandhi is an Indian politician and the son of late Prime Minister  Rajiv Gandhi  and former Congress President  Sonia Gandhi . After constant pressure from the party members, and chief proposers Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister  Manmohan Singh , Rahul on December 04, 2017 filed his nomination papers for the post of Congress president. With this he put an end to the two-year long speculations in the party circles about his impending elevation. After 19 years of service, party president Sonia made way for the new President, her son Rahul Gandhi on December 11. The party, through an internal election process —comprising of 9,000 party delegates from different blocks of India —endorsed Rahul Gandhi as the party president. Prior to this Rahul was the Vice-President and Chairperson of the  National Students Union of India  as well as Indian Youth Congress. He is a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust.After completing his education under a pseud...

Narendra Modi is the fourteenth Prime Minister of India, who took office on May 26, 2014. Before taking over as the PM, Modi was the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat for three consecutive terms (2001 to 2014). As the CM, he is credited with boosting Gujarat's economy and making it a lucrative investment destination for industrialists. A member of the  Bharatiya Janata Party , Modi is a Hindu nationalist and member of the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Aiming to transform India into a global manufacturing hub, Modi took the initiative of launching the '  Make in India ' campaign on September 2014. On November 8, 2016, in a surprise announcement, he ordered to ban higher  denomination currency notes  (Rs 500 and Rs 1,000) to weed out black money and end corruption. Ever since he has taken over the office, Modi has tried to raise foreign direct investment in the Indian economy, increased the budget on infrastructure and reduced spending on healthcar...

Manmohan Singh is a politician and the former (13th) Prime Minister of India. Born into a Punjabi family on September 26, 1932, Singh is the first Sikh to hold the office and the only PM after  Jawaharlal Nehru  to return to power after completing a full five-year term. He an active member of the  Indian National Congress  and took oath as the PM on May 22, 2004. Singh is considered to be one of the prime animators behind the 1991 economic revolution. Back then, when India faced economic crisis the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao surprisingly brought in apolitical Singh into his cabinet as Finance Minister. Despite people raising questions over his entry, Singh managed to introduce some significant structural reforms that liberalised India's economy. He played a key-role in the signing of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal in 2008. Though he is considered to be one of the most honest Indian politicians, the  2G scam  and  Commonwealth Games  scams in particular did tarnish S...

M Karunanidhi, at 92 years of age, is a five-time Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the president of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). He is India’s most senior legislator – having been a member of a legislative house more or less continuously from 1957, and has never lost an election. Karunanidhi’s stints as Chief Minister have been marked by a strong streak of populism, often going hand in hand with claims of social justice and affirmative action. He was an early member of the Dravidian political movement that espoused Tamil nationalism and cut his teeth in agitations against the imposition of Hindi education in the state. His rise to prominence was also in part as a screenwriter for propaganda movies that were instrumental in the rise of the Dravidian movement. He was a minister in the first DMK cabinet in 1967, and became CM after the death of incumbent CN Annadurai in 1969. Since then he has served as CM thrice more: 1971-76, 1989-91, 1996-2001 and 2006-11.

MK Kanimozhi is a politician who has represented the  Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)  in the Rajya Sabha since 2007. She is the daughter of DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi. She has been accused in the 2G Spectrum Scam, which allegedly caused a loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the government. Before entering politics, Kanimozhi was a journalist, and was publicly better known as a poet. For this reason, she had been seen in party circles as the literary heir to her father, just as her half-brother, MK Stalin was touted as his political successor. Since 2012, Kanimozhi has been under the scanner of the  CBI  for her alleged role in the scam over the sale of  2G telecom spectrum . She was accused of using her close links to party colleague  A Raja , the then Union Telecom Minister. She was specifically accused of receiving kickbacks in the form of investments, unsecured loans and payments to Kalaignar TV, a DMK-affiliated television channel. She had been remanded in judicial custody in Delhi’s T...

Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister of India and a paramount leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in 1947 until his death in 1964. He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community while many Indian children knew him as "Uncle Nehru" (Chacha Nehru). his birthday is celebrated as Children's Day in India. The son of Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman and Swaroop Rani, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court, and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice.

Indira Gandhi, popularly known as the Iron Lady of India, was a prominent politician and the first female Prime Minister of India. She was the daughter of India's first Prime Minister  Jawaharlal Nehru  and an important member of the  Indian National Congress  party. She held the office as PM from 1966 to 1977 and later again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, making her the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India after her father. She was the key-force for India’s war with  Pakistan  in support of the independence movement in Eastern Pakistan, which resulted in India's victory and creation of Bangladesh. She implemented the state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by decree. She was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards in 1984 after a few months of her ordering the checking of the Golden Temple in Amritsar to counter the Punjab insurgency.

A member of the  Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) , Andimuthu Raja got the coveted telecom ministry in the UPA government for the second time in 2009 pipping the high-profile Dayanidhi Maran, notwithstanding allegations of corruption. He got the plum portfolio for his unflinching loyalty to his leader,  M Karunanidhi , and also because of his proximity to Karunanidhi's daughter,  Kanimozhi . A Raja was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1996 and was made a Union Minister of state in 1999 during the then NDA government pipping many senior leaders who were hoping to get into the ministry. But Raja's rise from a block-level leader to a Cabinet minister was as meteoric as was his fall. In 2010, he was forced to resign as Union telecom minister after was chargesheeted by the  CBI  for his role in the  2G spectrum scam . In 2011, he was arrested and sent to Delhi's Tihar Jail while undergoing trial in the 2G spectrum case. A special CBI court on December 21, 2017 acquitted all accu...

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Basic problems can be solved either by the free interaction of the individuals pursuing their own objectives as is done in the market or in a planned manner by some central authority like the government. The Centrally Planned Economy In a centrally planned economy, the government or the central authority plans all the important activities in the economy. All important decisions regarding production, exchange and consumption of goods and services are made by the government. The central authority may try to achieve a particular allocation of resources and a consequent distribution of the final combination of goods and services which is thought to be desirable for society as a whole. For example, if it is found that a good or service which is very important for the prosperity and well-being of the economy as a whole, e.g. education or health service, is not produced in adequate amount by the individuals on their own, the government might try to induce the individuals to produce adequate a...

Production, exchange and consumption of goods and services are among the basic economic activities of life. In the course of these basic economic activities, every society has to face scarcity of resources and it is the scarcity of resources that gives rise to the problem of choice. The scarce resources of an economy have competing usages. In other words, every society has to decide on how to use its scarce resources. The problems of an economy are very often summarised as follows: What is produced and in what quantities? Every society must decide on how much of each of the many possible goods and services it will produce. Whether to produce more of food, clothing, housing or to have more of luxury goods. Whether to have more agricultural goods or to have industrial products and services. Whether to use more resources in education and health or to use more resources in building military services. Whether to have more of basic education or more of higher education. Whether to have more ...

Think of any society. People in the society need many goods and services1 in their everyday life including food, clothing, shelter, transport facilities like roads and railways, postal services and various other services like that of teachers and doctors. In fact, the list of goods and services that any individual2 needs is so large that no individual in society, to begin with, has all the things she needs. Every individual has some amount of only a few of the goods and services that she would like to use. A family farm may own a plot of land, some grains, farming implements, maybe a pair of bullocks and also the labour services of the family members. A weaver may have some yarn, some cotton and other instruments required for weaving cloth. The teacher in the local school has the skills required to impart education to the students. Some others in society may not have any resource  excepting their own labour services. Each of these decision making units can produce some goods or service...

It was mentioned earlier that in principle there are more than one ways of solving the central problems of an economy. These different mechanisms in general are likely to give rise to different solutions to those problems, thereby resulting in different allocations of the resources and also different distributions of the final mix of goods and services produced in the economy. Therefore, it is important to understand which of these alternative mechanisms is more desirable for the economy as a whole. In economics, we try to analyse the different mechanisms and figure out the outcomes which are likely to result under each of these mechanisms. We also try to evaluate the mechanisms by studying how desirable the outcomes resulting from them are. Often a distinction is made between positive economic analysis and normative economic analysis depending on whether we are trying to figure out how a particular mechanism functions or we are trying to evaluate it. In positive economic analysis, we ...

Poverty was a major challenge facing India. We also came to know that the majority of the poor live in rural areas where they do not have access to the basic necessities of life.  Agriculture is the major source of livelihood in the rural sector. Mahatma Gandhi once said that the real progress of India did not mean simply the growth and expansion of industrial urban centres but mainly the development of the villages. This idea of village development being at the centre of the overall development of the nation is relevant even today. Why is this so? Why should we attach such significance to rural development when we see around us fast growing cities with large industries and modern information technology hubs? It is because more than two-third of India’s population depends on agriculture that is yet to become productive enough to provide for them; one-third of rural India still lives in abject poverty. That is the reason why we have to see a developed rural India if our nation has to re...

Have you ever asked yourself how food grains, vegetables and fruits that we consume daily come from different parts of the country? The mechanism through which these goods reach different places depends on the market channels. Agricultural marketing is a process that involves the assembling, storage, processing, transportation, packaging, grading and distribution of different agricultural commodities across the country.  Prior to independence, farmers, while selling their produce to traders, suffered from faulty weighing and manipulation of accounts. Farmers who did not have the required information on prices prevailing in markets were often forced to sell at low prices. They also did not have proper storage facilities to keep back their produce for selling later at a better price. Do you know that even today, more than 10 per cent of goods produced in farms are wasted due to lack of storage? Therefore, state intervention became necessary to regulate the activities of the private trade...

You have studied in the previous chapter that, since independence, India followed the mixed economy framework by combining the advantages of the capitalist economic system with those of the socialist economic system. Some scholars argue that, over the years, this policy resulted in the establishment of a variety of rules and laws, which were aimed at controlling and regulating the economy , ended up instead in hampering the process of growth and development. Others state that India, which started its developmental path from near stagnation, has since been able to achieve growth in savings, developed a diversified industrial sector which produces a variety of goods and has experienced sustained expansion of agricultural output which has ensured food security.  In 1991, India met with an economic crisis relating to its external debt — the government was not able to make repayments on its borrowings from abroad; foreign exchange reserves, w h i c h w e generally maintain to import petrol ...

Have you ever thought of why some states in India are performing much better than others in certain areas? Why do Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh prosper in agriculture and horticulture? Why are Maharashtra and Gujarat industrially more advanced than others? How come Kerala, popularly known as ‘God’s own country’, has excelled in literacy, health care and sanitation and also attracts tourists in such large numbers? Why does Karnataka’s information technology industry attracts world attention?  It is all because these states have better infrastructure in the areas they excel than other states of India. Some have better irrigation facilities. Others have better transportation facilities, or are located near ports which makes raw materials required for various manufacturing industries easily accessible. Cities like Bengaluru in Karnataka attract many multinational companies because they provide world-class communication facilities. All these support structures, which facilitate devel...