Voltaire had said “one can always kill a man with incantations, plus a little poison”. Voltaire was a rationalist which the BJP government alas is not. It believes that one can revive an economy with incantations alone, for that is…
Expectations from Budget 2021 were high. Unsurprisingly so, for an economy battered by two years of slowdown, with a pre-pandemic annual growth rate of 4 per cent being a decadal low and the subsequent collapse in economic activity due to the…
On the face of it, the figures in the Union Budget 2021-22 suggest that the Government opted for imparting to the Indian economy a massive fiscal stimulus in the Covid financial year (April 2020 to March 2021), which is now…
Buised by the COVID-19 pandemic, Indians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are looking for renewal. So, even granting that an annual budget is not a corrective for all ills, evidence of a change in course was expected in…
India remains one of the most unequal societies in the world- divided not only by caste, Dalits versus OBCs and upper castes, Adivasis and the rest, but also by income and wealth class. In 2017 it was estimated that India’s…
While the country continues to grapple with the health and economic crisis as a result of COVID-19, widespread hunger and food insecurity is a silent emergency that has not been getting sufficient attention. Unfortunately, the Union Budget also does not…
“Health Care Takes Centre Stage, Finally” was the title of a chapter in the Economic Survey 2020-21, released a few days ago. Sadly, as we look into the details of the budget figures, that does not seem to be the…
There is one central message of the Narendra Modi government to the people of India from Budget 2021-22: you will have to be ‘atmanirbhar’ because you’re on your own. The Central government does not have your back. In the midst…
Budget presentations have turned tiresome for some years now, and for many reasons. Their length, which tends to be way beyond that warranted by substance. The tendency to drone on about off-budget policy initiatives in Part A, most of which…
It hardly needs emphasizing that the context for the Union Budget for 2021-22 is an exceptional one. The country continues to face a highly uncertain future on both the pandemic and economic fronts and their mutual impact on each other.…
