-The Hindu The crisis in agriculture demands that the government announce a strong fiscal stimulus for the rural economy A rather confident statement heard in the midst of India’s COVID-19-induced economic slowdown is this: “Agriculture will lead India’s economic revival”. But how valid is this claim put forward by government spokespersons and some observers? Four major arguments are offered. First, India’s food grain production in 2019-20 was 3.7% higher than in 2018-19. The...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Centre’s Covid-19 fiscal stance is flawed -CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
-The Hindu Business Line Fiscal policy in India has been very timid amidst harsh, inefficient (in terms of public health outcomes) lockdown spells. Unless this changes, the economy may dive further As India faces the biggest economic crisis since Independence, it is being led by a central government in denial about the severity of the impact on lives and livelihoods, and spreading false hopes about the immediate future. The Monthly Economic Report of...
More »100 days and GDP shrink: Government works on a fresh stimulus -Aanchal Magazine and P Vaidyanathan Iyer
-The Indian Express In mid-May, Sitharaman had announced five tranches of the AtmaNirbhar package, adding up to an economic package of Rs 20 lakh crore. AFTER MORE THAN 100 days since Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an economic package, six weeks after a series of meetings at the highest level underlined the need for a stimulus and official estimates indicating the worst-ever first quarter GDP contraction of 23.9 per cent, the government...
More »Reversing the economic reversal -Pulapre Balakrishnan
-Hindustan Times Don’t bank on V-shaped recovery. The Centre must discard dogmas, enhance investment News of a contraction of almost 24% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of this year would have come as a shock to every responsible citizen. The degree of contraction exceeds that in any major world economy. This is not surprising as India combined the world’s most stringent lockdown with the weakest economic stimulus. For...
More »India must aim for wider consumer base, direct public spending accordingly -Suvodeep Rakshit and Avijit Puri
-The Indian Express To achieve economic growth of 7-8 per cent, the government needs to start addressing some of the traditional sore points such as the large infrastructure deficit, the weak financial sector, archaic land and labour laws, and the administrative and judicial hurdles. India entered the pandemic with declining growth and limited scope for a conventional and large fiscal stimulus. We had noted in an article (IE, January 20, ‘Limited scope...
More »