Fiscal Deficit Hawks, who swoop down on North Block, where harried finance ministry officials race against time to prepare the Union government's annual budget, to screech sharp orders to slash the fiscal deficit. The fiscal deficit created now translates into a higher debt burden that future generations have to service. Is that fair? It is more than fair.
With tensions between an aggressive China and an emerging India intensifying, there will be significant changes and challenges in the Indian Ocean and South Asian regions. As 2022 comes to an end, the world is embracing a ‘new normal’ where new fault lines are being reconfigured in the Indo-Pacific.
Recent clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers along the Line of Actual Control, or LAC, have once again underscored how a 20th-century conflict continues to shape the 21st-century trajectory of Sino-Indian relations and constrain New Delhi’s aspirations to play a larger role on the global stage. The Galwan Valley crisis of 2020 made it clear that Beijing had no intention of diplomatically resolving its border dispute with India. It also pushed Indian decision-makers into making certain choices that they were reluctant to make in the past, hoping against hope that engagement with China would be enough to produce the desired results.
Until last year, Air India was a chronically underperforming public-owned airline. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, has often said that the government has no business being in business. Yet after eight and a half years of his tenure, Air India is one of only two enterprises that have been successfully privatized.
The strength of democracy is that debate and dialogue provide society with a self-corrective mechanism. The existence of strong opposition and policymakers to consider other points of view help devise more holistic policies. The constant questioning prevents complacency from setting in. Demonetisation was another policy that led to a major disaster since there was little consultation and the parliament was bypassed. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) are hanging fire, causing huge uncertainty. The farm Bills rammed through parliament without much discussion and were withdrawn only after a year-long agitation and disruption.
It is possible that in Tripura or elsewhere, labour courts might stop registering applications from workers based on the Tripura High Court’s interpretation of Section 2A of the Industrial Disputes Act. The government and the judiciary should step in quickly to clarify this confusion.