The annual budget is generally supposed to be a statement of not only the Union government’s actual and proposed revenue raising and spending plans, but also of its general economic policy intent. If so, the indications this year are chilling.…
This was never going to be an easy Union Budget to present for any finance minister, even before last week. Despite all the hype about a resurgent Indian economy, almost all the indicators that matter suggested that economic conditions were…
Denials and rejections of the most pressing issue in the Indian economy today – which is providing employment as minimum livelihood options for the majority – need to be underscored in the current budget. Added to the above are the…
Denials and rejections, of the most pressing issue in the Indian economy today which is providing employment as minimum livelihood options for the majority, needs to be underscored in the current budget. Added to above are the woes related to…
In her budget speech 2022, the finance minister claimed that the centre pieces of the budgets for both the current financial year (2021-22) and the next (2022-23) are sharp increases in capital expenditure driven by enhanced public investment. That expenditure…
No budget in recent memory has been presented at a time when the economy is in such dire straits: unemployment is so bad that there are job riots in Bihar and UP; wealth and income inequalities are among the worst…
The Indian economy is currently caught in a vicious spiral of inflation, stagnation, and a widening of the fiscal deficit. And this spiral is set to become even more vicious because inter alia of developments in the world economy. Even…
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…
