Reimagining the budget to reinvigorate reforms

It can become an organic driver of growth rather than something that provides one-off boosts or makes unrealised promises. This would require changing things that are systemic hurdles to animal spirits

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Can the budget reinvent reforms in a way that makes it an organic driver of growth rather than something that provides one-off boosts or makes unrealised promises?

(HT ARCHIVE)

Newsrooms and budgets have a complicated relationship where the urgency of the present often has to confront the almost mundane chore of going through the same drill every year. Given the fact that Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting her ninth consecutive budget today, even she is likely to feel these contradictory emotions.

India, especially under the current government, has established its credentials as a predictable and conservative machine, as far as fiscal responsibility is concerned. This rules out any nasty surprises in the budget for markets, especially bonds. It also means what many analysts have already pointed out: The budget will likely continue on the path of fiscal consolidation, which would entail no large populist spending or big capital-expenditure push to the economy. The latter peaked a couple of years ago.