governance, political economy, institutional development and economic regulation
Modi 1.0 was all about learning the ropes of national governance. Budget preparation and execution is a key ingredient. Budget purists cavil that budgets under Modi 1.0 were high on fuzzy motherhood goals and discretionary expenditure but low on schematic, multiplier enhancing allocations. Arun Jaitley’s five years as FM Rhetoric and poetry are part of […]
Read More Budget FY2020 – Marching to a different drum beatCongress workers were blasted last week by their leaders for the poor showing of the party in the national elections. P. Chidambaram, possibly the most distinguished Congress leader today, who has held key portfolios like Commerce, Home and Finance, followed in the wake of his party bosses and fingered bureaucrats, as the main stumbling blocks […]
Read More Unjustly flaying the “small g” – the bureaucracyNirmala Sitharaman has notched up a record merely by taking over as Finance Minister in the Modi 2.0 government. She will be the first woman to hold this position as a stand-alone charge. Indira Gandhi was the first woman Finance Minister in 1970-71. But she was already Prime Minister and assumed the position from Finance […]
Read More Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman – an avatar of Durga or Laxmi?Deepak Gupta’s book is not a quickie, neither to read, nor would it appear, to write, from the diligent research that has gone into it. The best read book in this genre has been Phillip Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India (1954) — a racy account of the British administration in India, by one of […]
Read More Book Review : Keeping the barbarians at bayGovernments are “lame ducks” in the last quarter preceding a general election. The future might not be theirs and self-assessment of achievements needs independent triangulation. So, caveat emptor prevails on both counts. Nothing, except convention, stops the government from presenting a full budget New taxes and new expenditure are “haram” in a vote on account, […]
Read More Interim Budget 2019 can voice forward looking ideasThe ritual halwa has been consumed in the cavernous basement of the Ministry of Finance and the budget printing team consigned incommunicado for the next ten days in a Byzantine tactic to maintain budget secrecy. Nothing illustrates the continuing “duality” of India than the fact that meanwhile the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley remains deeply engaged […]
Read More Interim Budget 2019 – style and substanceMoin Akhtar Querishi a suave Delhi businessman, educated at The Doon School – India’s Eton and St Stephens College – India’s Oxford, was our largest meat exporter in the noughties. His has been an enduring legacy at the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) – India’s premier corruption and big fraud investigation agency, which is regulated […]
Read More CBI the “caged parrot” sings out of tuneEven as the #MeToo onslaught against M.J. Akbar ground to an interim conclusion with his resignation from the council of ministers, we have before us the case of a Uttar Pradesh politician’s son who felt it necessary to openly brandish his pistol, to bolster his stature, in an argument during the wee hours of the […]
Read More Darning India’s stressed social fabricToday we found the grandfatherly chief minister of Haryana Mohan Lal Khattar smiling at us out of a half-page advertisement, paid for by taxpayers, announcing an “unprecedented decision” of his government. From October 1, 2018 onwards, electricity customers consuming less than 500 kilowatt hours per month would pay between 16 to 47 per cent less […]
Read More Electric subsidy – Haryana’s burden of richesArun Jaitley has returned to take charge as finance minister well before those who care for him would have advised. So what was the haste all about? The uncharitable view would be that power abhors a vacuum. Politicians and film stars — no wonder the two often overlap — are most vulnerable to the prolonged […]
Read More Jaitley returns as FM