Budget 2019 has been prepared in the shadow of a stranded economy, under siege and in shackles of its own creation. That calls for a growth budget – even better – an expansionary budget. But the Centre has so little elbow room in fiscal and monetary policy that it will require a lot of give and take for new finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to make that happen.
It would be folly to believe that the Centre could gloss over two-thirds of the reason why Indian economy is in a deep slowdown-declining consumption. Private and public consumption together accounts for about 70 per cent of GDP. No wonder, alarm bells started ringing and India quickly slumped into a slowdown ever since the consumption economy tanked starting 3 quarters ago. With the economy still decelerating, we’re yet to see the bottom of this round of slowdown.
