In order to understand why the Union Budget 2021-22 is being termed as ‘transparent’, it has to be read simultaneously with the 15th Finance Commission Main Report for 2021-26. But first, let us discuss 'fertilizer subsidy'. The budget documents for Union Budget 2021-22 show that the spending on ‘fertilizer subsidy’ was slashed from Rs. 1,33,947 crore in 2020-21 (revised estimate) to Rs. 79,530 crore in 2021-22 (budget estimate). However, the budgetary...
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The future of GST hangs in the balance -Praveen Chakrvarth
-The Hindu The Centre is best positioned to raise additional resources to bridge the GST compensation gap Today is the crucial meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council. It may not be an exaggeration to claim that today’s meeting could mark a milestone in the history of India’s fiscal federalism and shape the future of Centre-State relations. In 2017, the Centre made a promise to the States that a certain minimum...
More »A plan to revive a broken economy -Harsh Mander, Jayati Ghosh and Prabhat Patnaik
-The Hindu There are clear, implementable steps the Centre can take in fiscal terms to revive the economy and support livelihoods The Prime Minister has just announced Lockdown 4.0. Despite some resulting increase in economic activity, vast numbers of working people will remain without their regular incomes. He also announced a package of ₹20 lakh crore, but this includes already allocated money of ₹6-lakh crore and monetary policy directives to banks and...
More »Prabhat Patnaik, an economist and former economics professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, interviewed by Kaushal Shroff (The Caravan)
-CaravanMagazine.in In the budget unveiled in July, the finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman ambitiously claimed that India’s economy would hit $5 trillion by 2025. In the weeks that followed, the Central Statistics Office revealed that the gross domestic product growth rate for the April–June quarter fell to a six-year low of five percent; the Reserve Bank of India cleared a surplus transfer of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the union government; and...
More »Pathways to an income guarantee -Ram Singh
-The Hindu There is a compelling case for spending Rs. 3.6 lakh crore on the poor, but it must be done carefully The idea of a minimum income guarantee (MIG) has caught up with political parties. A MIG requires the government to pay the targeted set of citizens a fixed amount of money on a regular basis. With the promise of the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) by the Congress party, it is...
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