-The Hindu “As per RBI data, scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) have written off loans of ₹2,36,265 crore, ₹2,34,170 crore and ₹1,15,038 crore during FY2018-19, FY2019-20 and the first three-quarters of FY2020-21 respectively,” the Minister said. Banks have written off bad loans to the tune of ₹1.15 lakh crore in the first three-quarters of the current fiscal, the Lok Sabha was informed on March 8. As per RBI guidelines and policy approved by bank...
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Recovery? Different numbers tell different stories -Jahangir Aziz
-The Indian Express With a more accurate way of measuring GDP growth, the pace of recovery is much slower in real terms Imagine driving a car whose speedometer cannot tell the current speed but only relative to what it was four hours ago. Apart from the comical encounters with police when stopped for speeding and the predicament in defining a “speed limit”, there is a more fundamental problem it would create. The...
More »A changing fiscal framework -Dipankar Dasgupta
-The Hindu The government’s announced Fiscal Policy stance and the fiscal regime it is running seem contradictory There used to be a time — and this was well before India began to globalise — when each Union Budget announced sales tax increases on tobacco products, especially cigarettes. The demand for cigarettes being somewhat inelastic, the rise in tax was expected to be a shot in the arm for the revenue-starved government of...
More »Mid-Day Meals play a crucial role in guaranteeing child nutrition in the post-pandemic world
School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...
More »Budget 2021-22: A political economy perspective -Yamini Aiyar
-IdeasforIndia.in Examining the 2021-22 Union Budget with a political economy lens, Yamini Aiyar contends that the policy choices reflects Government of India’s propensity to centralise rather than to devolve, and a shift away from welfarism. Following the presentation of the Union Budget 2021-22 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on 1 February, economists have carefully scrutinised the fiscal math and debated the economic rationale behind the policy choices. Beyond the fiscal math, the...
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