Economic & Political Weekly’s April 2026 issues (Vol. 61, Nos. 14–17) are dominated by multi-author analysis of Union Budget 2026-27, a special feature on India’s industrial transformation, and commentary on the West Asia conflict’s economic and geopolitical implications.
[Source: Economic and Political Weekly — Sameeksha Trust — April 2026 — https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/14, https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/15, https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/16, https://www.epw.in/journal/2026/17]
Issue 14 (Vol. 61, No. 14 — 4 April 2026)
Focus: Union Budget 2026-27 — Multi-author Special Analysis
| Section | Articles |
|---|---|
| Editorials | “Stalemate at the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference”; “Happiness beyond Social Media and Anand Bhavans” |
| Budget 2026-27 | “Consolidation amid Crisis: Reading the Union Budget 2026–27”; “A Basic Misconception about Export-led Growth” (Prabhat Patnaik); “Budget 2026–27 and Coping with the Emerging Economic Challenge” (Sudipto Mundle, Ajaya Sahu); “Agriculture and Rural in the Union Budget: From Subsidies to Investments” (Sukhpal Singh); “Social Sector Budget: Look towards the States” (Dipa Sinha); “Macro-reframing the Gender Budget: Paid and Unpaid Domestic Labour” (Ritu Dewan, Swati Raju); “Manufacturing Sector Proposals in Union Budget 2026–27” (Biswajit Dhar); “Is This Budget a Reset for Infrastructure?” (Partha Mukhopadhyay); “Fiscal Consolidation and Federalism: Interpreting Union Budget 2026–27” (Lekha Chakraborty); “Union Budget 2026–27: A Note on Public Finance in India” (Surajit Das); “The Indian Union Budget” (Ashima Goyal); “Tax Mobilisation Strategies: Union Budget 2026–27” (A Athira, Vishnu K Ramesh); “Budget Numbers: The Economic Fallout of War and Macroeconomic Stability” (Pinaki Chakraborty, Resham Nagpal) |
| Special Articles | “Limitations of the Politics of Social Justice in Transforming Rural Bihar” (Sandipan Baksi, Mrityunjay Pandey); “Housing Inequality and Housing Asset Creation in Urban India: A Finance Lens” (Swastik Harish, Rasha Hasan Lala) |
| Perspectives | “Trump’s Fragile Counter-hegemony: Elite Fractions, Knowledge Networks, and Passive Revolution” (Inderjeet Parmar) |
Issue 15 (Vol. 61, No. 15 — 11 April 2026)
Focus: Employment Guarantee, West Asia, MGNREGA Repeal Debate
| Section | Articles |
|---|---|
| Editorial | “An Eclipse of Justice” |
| Comment | “Iran’s Resilience, US’s Hubris, Israel’s Malevolence” |
| H T Parekh Finance Column | “Militarised AI, Private Credit, and Iran War” (Farwa Sial and C P Chandrasekhar) |
| Budget 2026-27 | “Are Kartavyas Any Different from ‘Priorities’ of 2025–26?” (Mala Lalvani and Ajit Karnik); “Recasting Rural Employment: What the Budget Signals beyond Allocation” (Jyothis Sathyapalan) |
| Commentary | “Employment Guarantee: Repeal in Lieu of Repair” (Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera) — argues MGNREGA replacement by VB-G RAM G Act (tabled Parliament Dec 15, 2025) is a dilution, not repair; “Battle of Promises: Politics of ST Status in Assam Re-examined” (Purna Kanta Taye and Gaurav Das); “T K Oommen and the Art of Social Sciences” (Tanweer Fazal) |
| Special Articles | “Economic Concentration in India: The Role of Financial Conditions” (Zico Dasgupta and Arjun Jayadev); “Right to Clothing and the Clothing Crisis during the Bengal Famine of 1943–44” (Toru Matsumoto) |
| Notes | “The ‘Bare Life’ of D-voters: A Case Study of Haripur and Amguri Villages of Bongaigaon District in Assam” (Debashis Nath and Silpee Parashar) |
| Perspectives | “Lessons from the Trump Tariff Shock: Implications for India’s Textiles and Apparel Sector” (Sangeeta Ghosh) |
Issue 16 (Vol. 61, No. 16 — 18 April 2026)
Focus: India’s Industrial Transformation (8-article special feature) + Labour Market
| Section | Articles |
|---|---|
| Editorials | “PLFS 2025: Some Labour Market Perspectives”; “India’s Productivity Challenge” |
| Law and Society | “Towards Restoring Justice: Rehabilitation of Vulnerable Undertrials” (Anjali Mathur) |
| Commentary | “What Does Intelligence Excuse?: Chomsky, Epstein, and the ‘Necessary Illusions’ of the Intellectual Class” (Pavan Korada and Raj Shekhar Sen); “Consumption Inequality and Poverty in India” (Ritika Agrawal, Rohan Bansal, Sunil Kumar, and Avdhesh Shukla); “The Welfare Trap: How Indigenous Tenure Governance Undermines Justice and Environmental Stewardship” (Dipika Adhikari) |
| Special Feature: India’s Industrial Transformation | “Industrialising with a Dualistic Structure, Diverging Regional Patterns, and Environmental Challenges” (Nagesh Kumar); “Recent Manufacturing Growth in India: Size and Sectoral Patterns” (M Suresh Babu); “Unorganised Manufacturing Enterprises in India: Significance, Heterogeneity, Performance, and Constraints” (Rajesh Raj Natarajan and Kunal Sen); “Formal Credit and Persistent Constraints: Revisiting Access to Finance among Indian Enterprises” (Mohd Shadab Danish and N R Bhanumurthy); “India’s Industrial Archipelago: Uneven Manufacturing Growth in a Services-led Economy” (Meenakshi Shekhar and Twincle Halder); “Identification of Star Firms and Decoding Investment in Intangibles: Evidence from the Indian Manufacturing Industry” (Jitamitra Behera and Ruchi Sharma); “Does Competition Spur Investment?: Evidence from India’s Manufacturing Industries” (Harendra Kumar Behera, Pawan Gopalakrishnan, and Abhinav Narayanan); “Industrial Growth and Environmental Degradation: Evidence from India’s Core Industries” (Nivaj Gogoi and Farah Hussain) |
| Insight | “Social Sector Spending on Health and Education in Haryana: A Decadal Review” (Anil Autwal and Kiran Devi) |
| Perspectives | “Between Assertion and Victimhood: Upper-caste Discontent and the Protests against UGC Equity Regulations” (Balu Sunilraj and Prithiraj Borah) |
Issue 17 (Vol. 61, No. 17 — 25 April 2026)
Focus: Delimitation, Labour, Sacred Geography, Ports & Horticulture
| Section | Articles |
|---|---|
| Editorials | “Defeat of the Government’s Delimitation Agenda”; “The Return of Labour” |
| Strategic Affairs | “Chinese Perceptions of the US–Israel War on Iran” (Hemant Adlakha) |
| Commentary | “Sacred Geography and Political Imagination: Thiruparankundram and Hindutva’s Search for a Tamil ‘Ayodhya’” (Arun Kumar G); “Making Itself Irrelevant: How Indian Academia Is Outsourcing Its Credibility to Foreign Journals” (Sonali Gupta); “The Industrialisation of the Workforce: Some Reflections” (Arup Mitra); “Anti-caste Print and Vernacular Publics: The Case of Panchama” (Yashashwani Srinivas) |
| Special Articles | “Horticulture Sector in India: Trends, Performance, and Impact” (Sant Kumar, Anjani Kumar, Nalini Ranjan Kumar, Kriti Sharma, Immanuelraj Kingsly); “Migration, Social Identity, and Education: Quality of Life Disparities in Urban India” (Ayushi Basoya and Rama Pal); “Changing Profile of Major Ports of India” (Prabir De and Arpit Barman) |
| Notes | “Coping with Aadhaar: Insights from a Village in Bihar” (Swati Tirkey, Vyom Anil) |
| Insight | “The Shifting Discourse on Tribes in Uttar Pradesh” (Sanjay Singh) |
| Engage-Articles | “Historicising Women’s Reservation: Contextualizing the Women’s Reservation Bill in India” (Minakshi Buragohain) |
| Letters | “New Solid Waste Management Rules 2026” (Jawhar Cholakkathodi and Bikku) |
UPSC GS Relevance
| Paper | Key Themes |
|---|---|
| GS2 | Delimitation controversy; MGNREGA repeal debate (Jean Dreze & Reetika Khera); ST status politics in Assam; judicial rehabilitation of undertrials; UGC equity regulations |
| GS3 | Budget 2026-27 analysis (13 articles); India’s industrial transformation; manufacturing growth patterns; unorganised sector; horticulture sector performance; ports profile; export-led growth critique |
| GS1 | Bengal Famine 1943-44; women’s reservation history; tribal discourse in UP; anti-caste print publics |
| IR | West Asia conflict (Iran-US-Israel); Trump tariff shock implications for India textiles; Chinese strategic perceptions |
