Budget for the right results: Government to step back.

India has excelled in welfare payments since 2020, though the focus on “saturation” targeting encourages large, inefficient spill overs in distribution of free food, free electricity and water supply, cash transfers to all farmers and subsidized “affordable” homes. Nevertheless, many would say, it is better to over supply welfare goods and services, including to the […]

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Government appointments: “quick results” scupper deep reforms

The recent, hastily terminated attempt by the Government of India to induct 45 specialists as senior and mid-level civil servants on contract and the earlier agriculture reform legislation, withdrawn in 2022, both point to three generic, weak spots in the government’s reform strategy. Three errors First, scoring a quick win for the reforms report card […]

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Is Modi Mania Waning?

Over the last decade we have become accustomed to public spectacles mounted by the BJP with verve and grandeur. One such is the show on Independence Day. Masterful rhetoric, a mix of humility and extreme confidence and an array of “facts” rolled out by Prime Minister Modi, mesmerize the audience into a fantasy of India […]

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Disasters kill people & erode development gains.

Climate change science has taught us that human activity is responsible for adverse meteorological phenomenon like unfavourable weather patterns and degradation of geophysical assets like land or underground water aquifers. This erodes the neat distinction, drawn earlier, between natural disasters – earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, subsidence, floods, epidemics- which could only be managed not prevented, and […]

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Can India replace China?

In 2024 the United States and the European Union together added 39 percent of global GDP (2015 $). China was second at 19 percent whilst India lagged at 3.5 percent. Together these four economies added 62 percent to global GDP. Incredible as it might seem, in the short span of thirty-six years, by 2060- within […]

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India Budget 2024-25: Fiscally diligent sans new ideas to boost capital productivity, lower food inflation or create good jobs

One of the commendable commitments of the Narendra Modi administration has been to fiscal rectitude, despite its penchant to curate expansive benefits for identifiable groups of the voting public. FM Sitharaman has carried through this commitment in her outlays for fiscal 2024-25. Aligning with fiscal rectitude principles Fiscal deficit (FD) the prime metric of fiscal […]

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Political underpinnings of the Wonder that is India

The heart of India’s Parliament is, ironically, the “lower house” or Lok Sabha, where 542 members, directly elected by voters represent the will of the people. It is elected in quinquennial, rumbustious national elections. Since China, another populous country, does not follow classic democratic principles, like universal franchise and representation rights, Indian elections have always […]

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A capitalist’s lament

Book Review: What went wrong with capitalism. Ruchir Sharma. Allen Lane 2024. This book is about an early love of the author– capitalism- and why it lost its magical efficiency by feeding voraciously on “easy money” willingly generated by governments and central banks to safeguard growth. Contemporary observers would shrug and say what is new? […]

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