Category Economy and Infrastructure

Budget 2023- 24: The Case to Build New Cities

By 2051, India may have an additional 335 million urban population. Several new cities will be needed to settle them.

ndia needs more than a pat on the back from fiscal-deficit-focused rating agencies and analysts, in order to regain economic vigour in a slowing world. A whole lot more. India needs a new New Deal, and, in the present national and global context, that would mean investing in a large project that creates demand for material and machines produced in India and for lots of labour, both skilled and unskilled, while adding to India’s future productive capacity. Building a new city is a good choice.

Exploring the Economic Potential of Indian Waterways

Eleven months ago, in a first for inland waterway cargo movement in India, the MV Lal Bahadur Shastri, a river cargo vessel, transported 200 metric tonnes of food grain over 2,350 km from Patna to Guwahati via Bangladesh. Now, the MV Ganga Vilas, a luxury liner, has begun to operate the world's longest river cruise, across 3,200 km, from Varanasi to Dibrugarh via Bangladesh.

Defence and Union Budget

Budget made for capital expenditure must increase if India is to keep pace with China's rising military might. India’s tumultuous and volatile strategic environment showed no signs of abating in intensity. New Delhi continues to face a two-front challenge from both of its primary foes, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Pakistan, notwithstanding the latter’s recent conciliatory overtures, which are only a smokescreen to tide over its dire economic vulnerabilities.

India’s Urbanisation Policies: Impact & Challenges

‘Another important aspect of urban infrastructure is linked to urban governance, which is in a shambles in most parts of the country.’

A report by the World Bank, released in November last year, on financing India’s urban infrastructure needs, focuses on private investments ameliorating urban problems. The push to attract private capital, since the 1990s, followed by the urban reforms under the United Progressive Alliance I regime, the Smart City mission, and now this report, continues to plague India’s policy paradigm in the urban sector.

The Need for IndOS: A Choice for a Fair Competition?

The government wants to create a mobile operating system (OS) to compete with the dominant Android, owned by Google, and Apple’s iOS operating systems that have pretty much divided up the global smartphone market (Chinese tech major Huawei uses its own Harmony operating system on its phones after US President Donald Trump ordered Google to deny Android to companies that violated the sanctions against Iran). The government has even come up with a name for it: IndOS. 

Fiscal Deficit as a Shape-Shifter in India

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. In the misty mornings of peak winter, a flock of sharp-beaked, joyless birds takes flight in the capital – 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.

RBI Affidavit Obfuscates rather than Clarifying

The government affidavit filed on November 16 justified demonetization by claiming that it was a part of a bigger policy push to digitize and formalize the economy – in its view a beneficial step. The affidavit, in paragraph 15 justifies the decision to demonetize the large denomination currency notes by stating that it was a “well-considered decision” taken after “extensive consultation with the Reserve Bank of India (‘RBI’) and advanced preparation”. The implication is that if the decision was wrong, it is the RBI’s (the expert’s) fault.

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