I AND MY WORDS

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi Addressing Media Ahead of the Budget Session 2025 For the last few years, we have been solely missing reform in our government action. Instead, we have been seeing an attempt at tax tinkering in the name of simplification, not just for individuals, but also for corporates, being passed off as reforms. Now, the problem, as Professor Prassana Tantri explains well in this chat on the popular podcast Vaad, is that these things will be meaningless in the presence of tax targets being set regularly to fund government expenditure. It is a must watch, and can be seen at the link below. This literally hurts – India cannot be a consumption economy like the United States of America, despite all the people who are perhaps advising the government to do so, inspired by the motherland of the Chicago School of Economics which is widespread across American thought. However, the policy advisory of raising funds comes from the European model, which a country with 800 mi...

Erstwhile Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, K. Karunanidhi, launching the free colour TV scheme in 2006 (source: Rediff ) Recently, a storm unleashed itself on Twitter, as a famous YouTuber came on a popular podcast and made a bizarre claim. Free television distribution, it seems, led to improvement in the outcomes of women. And that is good economics. While I don't watch things all the time, what caught my fancy was the defence of the absurdity since. One journal paper was quoted by the YouTuber in question, and was touted as proof of good economics also being associated with freebies. Again, I usually don't comment on freebies, because I think all freebies as a rule are bad. Freebies raise the cost of service across the economy, create greater entry barriers for the poor that they are supposed to serve, and eventually distract from actual welfare spending on such issues as healthcare and education. However, the absurdity on this was so high that I wanted to write for a change. On...

While India and the whole World face an Energy Crisis that doesn't seem to be diminishing anytime soon, things have gone from bad to worse in Rajasthan's Power Sector with record-high bills and unannounced power cuts throughout the State. The matter has generated considerable political heat in the state, with the Leader of Opposition in the Vidhan Sabha Gulab Chand Katariya cornering the government on the exceedingly high power bills and former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje slamming the government on the issue of power cuts, blaming it for mismanagement. Politics apart, there are several layers to the problem that need to be unraveled to truly understand the origins of the so-called Desert State's power woes that have led them into this storm. The reasons are manifold, with some being systemic while uncontrollable factors also coming into the picture now. However, as one will see, the state government has left much room for desire on the issue, and carries much of the bur...

With the ongoing pandemic a few things are now becoming obvious on the economic front.  The much touted economic recovery plan Aatmanirbhar Bharat has been partly successful; however, with judicial interference now and anticipated in the future, one can see the reform roll out promised under the program failing to materialize before end of 2023. The Loan sanction vs disbursal ratio under the emergency credit loan guarantee scheme clearly did not pan out on desired lines for some crucial reasons I had highlighted earlier. Agricultural reforms remain in the cold storage for now.  Part success of course has been used because PLI schemes of certain sectors have received great response . Particular focus for applause should go on mining, pharmaceuticals and electronics, as well as medical devices which also hold great promise and can be indeed transformative along with textiles. However, in the other sectors it remains an expression of noble intentions like solar PV modules an...

  It has been a very long time since a budget actually cut short on frills and embellishments and took head on some of India’s bigger challenges. Political messaging in India for long has been couched in the poverty driven, gareeb kalyan , redistributive mindset which while seemingly right has made politicians forsake growth as a political strategy. To that end, the Narendra Modi government’s Budget 2021 with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman have displayed a rare step - a break from the voter driven politics of India and actually pushing for growth. For the longest time, India’s political class has been deriving the wrong messages from electoral politics. This misplaced belief that free goodies, subsidies and coverage for all will somehow be able to buy the voter’s support has caused much damage to the economy. What has often been forgotten is that you can only distribute what you earn, and distributing wealth instead of poverty is what the voters would rather prefer. It is ...

While Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya agreed with some form of mixed economy, one sees practicality in his economic thought and vision. There are two particular instances that seem to clearly indicate what he thought of different kinds of measures. Minimal government intervention in the private space of entrepreneurship beyond a certain regulatory approach was clearly seen as a plus by him, judging by his critique of the five year plans over centralization. As noted by Mahesh Chand Sharma, Panditji saw major problems with the second plan vis-à-vis the first five year plan, especially on the mission statement of creating a socialist society:  Socialism as a confused principle only ends up in the emergence of autocratic governments, and remains fundamentally incompatible with democracy. The second plan, being a plan that aimed to alter a fundamental system in its entirety, would certainly be a problem as it shifted focus from functionality. The obsession with big industry was ‘indecent’ a...

A Swadeshi Poster (Courtesy: Republic of Less ) Swadeshi is a thought, an ideal that arose across several countries and not just India. However, the roots in India arose from the 1905 movement whereby the extremist division of the Congress, led by the famous Lal-Bal-Pal trio (Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal) pushed for an aggressive movement towards home rule, furthered in 1916 by the Home Rule and later in the form of Gandhi’s spiritual form of disobedience. Across the three was a common thread running - creating an economic alternative to demonstrate that India was, just like many other Commonwealth nations or even the crown state of Britain, more than capable of being self-reliant, be it machinery, trade, textile, education or any other aspect. The act was not just political, but was driven by the sentiments related to Bharat Mata that was already whipping up – this was around the same time that the fiery intellectual revolutionary Aurobindo Ghosh through ...

Today, this tweet came up to my knowledge, as I was walking through on the top trends on Twitter for a brief glance. What caught my eye was the image that was inserted in the tweet. Contrary to perceptions about Bihar being some agricultural rustic land, one saw some big plants having been named in the list. The tweet had an angry tone, and was asking that people are wanting to re-develop Bihar's industries so that the migrant labourers do not have to ever leave their state again. Ironically, while this topic rages on among the tweeters of Bihari origin, the topic seems to have hit a stonewall of silence, as if no one wants to talk about the story behind these pictures. https://twitter.com/25kumaranup/status/1263031899993198593 Migrants are not able to get work within Bihar has always been a major driver of the migrant exodus from the state. In 2015, when there were state elections, there was a detailed discussion after perhaps several decades in the news media about ind...

Courtesy: The Hindu COVID-19 has impacted economies across the world, forcing people to seek government assistance in times of desperation. India already announced the PM Garib Kalyan Package and there are talks of a package to help the besieged Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. Reserved Bank of India (RBI) too has announced a host of measures along with Ministry of Finance to ease compliance issues and infuse liquidity in the hands of the people to tide over the crisis.  Interestingly in India, a debate has also started on the very need of a stimulus package given its potential impact on fiscal credit, led by Ila Patnaik and Haseeb Drabu. This section is advocating that instead of fiscal package, states should rather be allowed to raise funds on their own, an ability they lost with the implementation of the GST. While the Indian government is working towards resolving the economic and human crisis in the most appropriate manner, we take a look at ot...