Can flying geese-Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu-Power India’s growth with stability?

State government performance is going to matter in the coming months of fiscal and economic stress. The national performance will depend in the near term, crucially, on how the better-performing states pull their weight. One criterion of state performance is the budget allocations for fiscal 2023-24 starting April 1st and the outlook on fiscal rectitude. […]

Indian Civil Services: Steel Frame or Steel Cage

BOOK REVIEW Transforming the Steel Frame: Promise and Paradox of Civil Service Reform EDITED BY VINOD RAI Rupa 2023 pp. 233; Rs 595 Vinod Rai — the editor — retired as the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, one among a handful of constitutional positions that senior civil servants aspire to, if the apex […]

Indian Economy: Reading the Tea Leaves

In India, the Union government takes on a much broader fiscal mandate than is necessary. Some of this is driven by the constitutional allocation of tax mandates, which favor tax flows to the Union government. Nearly 20 per cent, on an average, of a state government’s revenue flows in a “waterfall arrangement” from the Centre […]

Taming Digital Titans

Between 2010 and 2022, the combined revenue of the top five digital titans in the United States (US) (Amazon, Meta, Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft) exploded from US$ 181 billion to US$3.9 trillion a scorching growth of 29 percent per year. This rapid accretion of economic power invited deeper scrutiny and rethinking of whether the regulatory […]

Air India- The “maharaja” turns high roller

The normally low-profile Tata group high-rolled their way into London earlier this week, signing letters of intent to purchase 470 commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. Both manufacturers together booked only 1,622 orders for commercial aircraft last year. The Air India order is 29 per cent of last year’s booking — an outsize investment given […]

The Downside of Systematically Important Billionaires

The Union Finance Secretary dismissed l’affair Adani as a storm in a teacup. He is right of course. The personal misfortunes of the Adani family are unlikely to shake the financial stability of India. But it is a rather large teacup, even post denouement, valued at US$60 billion. If the “teacups” of all of India’s […]

Budget Bounties 2023-24

Our garden is full of goodies come and get what you need. This is what Finance Minister Sitharaman conveyed to the people (and voters) of India in her 2023-24 budget speech. Adding to the ever deepening gift bag that the Modi administration has held out to voters since 2015, the budget not only slashed income […]

A Fiscal Council for India

Fifty-one countries have legislated a publicly financed Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI) to provide unbiased analysis of public spending, forecast the economic outcomes thereof and review government performance versus fiscal rules (targets) to improve fiscal and financial stability. Supreme audit institutions (like the Comptroller and Auditor General in India) do this regularly ex post facto and […]

Saving Asia from Stalling Growth

Book Review The Connections World: The future of Asian Capitalism Author: Simon Commander & Saul Estrin Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pages: 253 Price: £74.99 The “Asia” that this book addresses spreads northwards across the Pacific Ocean from Indonesia till the borders of China, North Korea and Japan and westwards to Pakistan on the Indian Ocean, […]

Fiscal Options for Budget 2023-24

Between spending and saving, governments are generally better at the former. High growth comes with the advantage that government revenue expands and gets spent, as is happening this fiscal. But this is also habit forming. If growth tapers down – as is expected in FY 2024- cutting back government spending will be politically rocky just […]

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