This month marks the 80th anniversary of the meeting at Bretton Woods, dominated by John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White, that created the new postwar international system. The Indian delegation left its mark on the conference, punching far beyond its weight.
A thread ... The Indian delegation was led by Jeremy Raisman. It included C.D. Deshmukh, A.D. Shroff, Shanmukham Chetty, B.K. Madan and Theodore Gregory. Deshmukh later wrote in his autobiography that Raisman generally "handled India's case with sympathy and loyalty"

This week marks a pivotal moment in Indian history -- the 350th anniversary of the coronation of Chhatrapati Shivaji in 1674. A lot is known of his military genius, but less of his vision for the new state he built (1/14) In his book 'Rise of Maratha Power', the 19th century liberal M.G. Ranade compared Chhatrapati Shivaji to Napoleon, "a great organiser and builder of civil institutions". These institutions had "an originality and breadth of conception" not seen earlier in Indian history (2/14)

Poonam Gupta and Barry Eichengreen shine a light on a potential federal faultline in the coming decade -- the sharp divergence in public finances of Indian states. The gap will likely grow as more indebted states also have higher primary deficits and lower economic growth. (1/5) The different fiscal trajectories of Gujarat and Punjab are a case in point. Here are the debt/GDP forecasts under different scenarios, from their longer paper with Ayesha Ahmad. ()
First, Gujarat ...
(2/5) https://t.co/ioYZ7cYW69ncaer.org/wp-content/upl…

Can a thread of threads be called a meta thread? Here are some thought provoking threads on global inflation that I have come across. First, Hyun Song Shin of BIS on the role of supply bottlenecks.

https://twitter.com/HyunSongShin/status/1458778459573006337?s=20

JW Mason on inflation in the only "fundamentally un-Keynesian crisis" we have seen in our lifetimes.

https://twitter.com/JWMason1/status/1459184818781097998?s=20

The days leading to the Union budget are dominated by discussions about what to expect in the future. There are also some attempts to look at past budgets. This thread is about a budget speech that is not usually given its due -- by H. M. Patel in 1977. 1977 is known for its political importance as the Janata Party won power after the Emergency. What is less well known is that it also saw important shifts in economic thinking. H.M. Patel was in the old ICS, an associate of Vallabhbhai Patel and a member of the Swatantra Party.

1. Today is the 125th death anniversary of Gopal Ganesh Agarkar — liberal, rationalist, social reformer, crusader for individual rights, fearless writer. This bilingual thread is on his battles on behalf of women in 19th century Maharashtra. 2. Let me begin with the very last scene of ‘टिळक आणि आगरकर’, the celebrated Marathi play by Vishram Bedekar, on the friendship turned rivalry between these two truly great men.

A thread on my Covid opeds over the past few weeks.
1. What Richard Feynman can tell us about the fragility of global supply chains.
livemint.com/opinion/column… 2. Why India should think of setting up a national risk office to assess its ability to deal with large exogenous shocks such as a pandemic.
livemint.com/opinion/column…

This is a long thread on the analytical structure of the inflation targeting regime in India. The tweets below are based on the Quarterly Projection Model of the RBI. The aim is not to get into a debate on inflation targeting but correct some of the misconceptions on Twitter. The QPM is one of the central pillars of inflation targeting in India. There are ten equations that have been used. I have attempted here to provide a simplified explanation of the structure of this analytical edifice.

Friday will mark three years since demonetisation was announced. This thread is not on its impact on the Indian economy but on a more technical issue in economics -- the nature of the money supply process. Demonetisation could be seen as a rare natural experiment in this context The key question is -- what drives money supply growth? The monetarist view is that a central bank alters base money through changes in its balance sheet. The money multiplier then kicks in to generate broad money (M3) that is usually a multiple of base money (M0)

A thread of eight articles on GST written by Dr Vijay Kelkar for the Mint Views pages the years. These are worth reading again given the growing recognition that India needs to move away from the current suboptimal GST structure (1/8) February 2009: Reforming the tax system (2/8)
livemint.com/Opinion/e6zGHu…

My good friend @aparanjape has reminded us that today is the 48th death anniversary of the writer, sociologist and educationist Iravati Karve. He has nudged me to attempt a Twitter thread on this great scholar Iravati Karve was born in Burma, where her father worked. She was named after the river Irrawaddy. She later married Dinakar Karve, son of the social reformer D. K. Karve and brother of the great R. D. Karve (who Dr Ambedkar defended in court when he was accused of obscenity)