-Hindustan Times This entails addressing prevailing systemic deficiencies along with managing the added burden of Covid-19. India’s health sector requires a two-fold intervention by the government. The extraordinary situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exposed the vulnerabilities of our fragile health-care system, demands an equally extraordinary intervention by the government. The expectation from the Union Budget 2021-22 is for the central government to lead from the front in the health...

-Livemint.com The government will have to ensure its spending improves economy-wide productivity, and its own revenue-generating capacity, to avoid a stagflationary trap After dithering on a fiscal stimulus package for nearly a year, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has declared that she will not allow the fiscal deficit number to worry her too much as she pushes spending to revive growth in the upcoming budget. The government hopes that growth will generate higher...

-The Hindu In the farm laws debate, the focus should be on the exchequer-farm subsidies issue and the spending on farm subsidies In the on-going debates around the three new pieces of agricultural legislation and the farmers’ demand for continuation of minimum support prices (MSP), questions have often been raised whether the government should be using the taxpayers’ money to provide subsidies to the farming community in this country. However, logically, two...

-The Indian Express India's economy in 2020: As Annus Horribilis 2020 comes to an end, there are positives in the economy: signs of a GDP rebound, and buoyant equity markets. But demand is weak, receipts are down, and the employment situation is grim. All eyes are on the Budget — and on the vaccines In a little over a month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present what she has heralded as “a...

-NetworkIdeas.org The complete absence of any meaningful fiscal response from the Indian government in the face of one of the biggest economic crises ever faced, cries out for explanation. One argument has been that the central government is concerned about its external vulnerability: a large increase in public spending could generate higher imports, thereby worsening the trade deficit at a time when volatile capital flows have already made the balance of...