-The Indian Express In his blog, S C Garg, former Economic Affairs secretary, has claimed that the actual fiscal deficit for the last financial year and the current one is more than a full percentage point higher than the official data. On the face of it, India’s fiscal deficit, which essentially maps how much money the Indian government has to borrow to make up the gap between its expenditure and its revenues,...

-The Hindu Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee says the deficit numbers are a bit imaginary, not a big deal if breached Mumbai: Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee has said that he would not back fiscal tightening in the current economic environment. Prof. Banerjee added that the real constraint to the state of education in the country in the current climate of economic slowdown was not lack of money, but the lack of attention paid to...

-The Indian Express “All ministries have been directed to reduce wasteful expenditure on travel, food and conferences by 20 percent. The CCIG has asked the Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance, to take necessary action in this regard,” a source told The Sunday Express. In an austerity move, the Union government has decided to reduce wasteful expenditure on items such as travel and food by 20 percent, it is learnt. A decision of...

-The Hindu Misplaced optimism needs to cede ground to tangible policy interventions The government’s advance estimates for economic output and growth for the fiscal year ending in March may raise eyebrows, but only for the wrong reasons. The National Statistical Office (NSO) has estimated that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will expand by 5% in the 12-month period, in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s sharp downward revision last month in its...

-The Hindu The AAP will hope that the Assembly polls are a referendum on its government’s work Delhi, the Union Territory (UT) that hosts India’s capital city, might lag behind several States in total population and in area, but it enjoys outsize significance in terms of media and political attention. With 1.47 crore electors spread across the largely metropolitan national capital region and its pockets of rural voters in some suburbs, Delhi...