-NDTV.com Wherever we may be in other matters in global rankings, in one we are right at the top. India, where 800 million people are still dependent on government doles for a meal, has the dubious distinction of carrying out the most expensive democratic elections in the world. It has been estimated that the 2019 parliamentary elections cost US $2 billion. In addition, parties and individual candidates spent another US $5...

-The Hindu The one lever that the government could have pulled as it watched private Investment decline was to step up public Investment In a meeting held with the country’s corporate leaders on September 15, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman drew attention to an important aspect of the economy today. She rightly flagged concerns about sluggish corporate Investment, despite the government’s business-friendly stance, including a reduction in the corporate tax. The reduction, effected...

-Ideas for India The share of bank credit extended to MSMEs increased dramatically during the pandemic. In this post, Harsh Vardhan discusses the the government guarantee of bank loans as a possible driver of this growth. He outlines the current policy of providing credit against collateral, and the constraints MSMEs face while borrowing– which leads to decreased Investment and firm productivity. He argues that the learnings from the credit guarantee scheme...

-The Telegraph The airbrushing of the Indian economy is damaging The latest Monthly Economic Review from the ministry of finance gives the reader a great deal of comfort by indicating that all is well with the Indian economy. If there is any cause for concern at all, it is from external economic and political shocks: events like the Federal Reserve in the United States of America raising interest rates, or Russia invading...

-The Hindu The best way to support the manufacturing sector is to free it from the umpteen regulations that have stalled Investment for decades Many Indians on a daily basis use sophisticated goods that are either fully imported or just simply assembled in India. This is because India lacks a well-developed manufacturing supply chain that could help produce things from scratch. To tackle this, in 2020, the Central government came up with...