governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
The big question is does Budget 2025 help India step onto the path to Viksit Bharat by 2047? If high, inclusive growth is the surest way to reach that goal, the Finance Minister’s proposals for 2025-26 generally point in the right direction. But that is not saying much. Has reform by stealth reached the end […]
Read More Budget 2025: Slow turn towards Viksit BharatFinance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman crafted the budget around four key targets of accelerating growth, promoting inclusive development, enhancing private investment, uplifting household sentiments including by income tax reform to enhance income in the pockets of middle-class consumers- those earning up to Rs 1.2 million a year, who account for over 80 percent of the total […]
Read More Budget 2025: Scorecard of Hits & MissesHow is “Tipping Point” – a phrase heard most often in the context of climate change relevant for the 2025 budget in India? It becomes relevant in the context of India’s long-term goal of becoming a developed economy (Viksit Bharat) by 2047. If India fails to achieve the required growth during the intervening twenty-two years, […]
Read More India’s “Tipping Point” Budget 2025India 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 […]
Read More Budget for the right results: Government to step back.Finance Minister of India, Nimala Sitharaman is set to make history. Some, she has already made by being the first women to be Finance Minister (FM) if one excludes Prime Minister Indira Gandhi who held the finance portfolio in 1969. If all goes well, she will become the first FM to serve for more than […]
Read More If I were Nirmala SitharamanHigh growth generates the comfort of public unwillingness to look a gift horse in the mouth. When growth is more than double the global levels and the highest achieved by any comparator entity, there are even fewer quibbles. This is true for both startups and national economies. Both are subject to “analyst fog” about an […]
Read More Interim Budget 2024-25: Government a prisoner of over-reachBOOK REVIEW India’s Finance Ministers A K Bhattacharya Penguin (Business)2023 435 pages, Rs 999/- Finance Ministers (FMs), despite their dour calling, do not always follow the bland, understated credo expected of them. This is one message in this carefully packaged, extensively researched tome on eleven, post-Independence, Indian FMs, till the Emergency in 1977. Three themes […]
Read More Finance ministers who ruled early, Post Independence IndiaMonetary policy that hunts with the advanced economy “hounds”—via symmetric upward adjustments in policy interest rates over the last year—and simultaneously runs with developing country “hares”—by desperately trying to revive stalling growth—has contradictions just waiting to come home to roost. That growth in India is stalling is clear from the RBI Monetary statement on 6 […]
Read More High Policy rates sans supporting fiscal policy cannot tame inflationAssociating budgetary allocations with cultural tropes is one way of validating them. Consider the case of two Indian states, joined at the hip till 1960 — Gujarat and Maharashtra. The origins of the 1960 split The port city of Surat in Gujarat was the entrepôt for Western India and the link with Arabia and beyond […]
Read More Culture drives how States Spend Public moneyState 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. […]
Read More Can flying geese-Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu-Power India’s growth with stability?
Opinion India 