Through the Looking Glass

In 2015, I was summoned to the North Block from the office of the then Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha. For somebody who worked in a bank, my first thought was that some hell had broken loose somewhere; I may have written something that was a slip-up or something. We ended up having a one-hour long conversation and that was it. Nothing happened; life moved on as usual. Then, in 2016, I received another call that I now think possibly changed the trajectory of my career path and maybe, even life. I was asked if I want to work with Mr Sinha as the Officer on Special Duty. After mulling over it, it was decided that I will work with him for 18-24 months—even after Mr Sinha moved from the Ministry of Finance to the Ministry of Civil Aviation.  Why? I wanted to explore the world of policy. Such opportunities are hard to come by.  Besides, it’s where I learnt two of the biggest lessons that I now see panning out around us these days, especially during the debates on the #F...

Financial Express India can learn a lot from its experience in managing cash – getting a billion people what they need can be planned effectively A vaccine for Covid-19 is expected to come sometime over the next few months – hopefully in this year. Once a vaccine is available, getting it to India’s billion plus people is a logistical challenge with many moral and ethical questions attached. How should India plan for the vaccination program?  Before we go there, let us recognize that a few very important questions still remain to be answered. What shape and form the vaccine will be remains to be seen: it is expected that it will be intravenous and hence may require skilled or trained practitioners to administer. It is also not clear whether there will be only one vaccine or many competing ones, and how effective each might be. All of this will feed into the number of doses that might be required – whether a single shot would do or multiple jabs may be required. Hopefully, India will...

As the Centre and States try to find GST compensation cess monies, it is time to look beyond the present, to see how the future could unfold for State finances Financial Express The financial relationship between states and the Centre has been in news recently. The Fifteenth Finance Commission submitted its report to the president; there have been some delays in payment of the GST compensation cess, and there were some discussions on whether the Centre will honour its commitment of assuring a 14% revenue growth in the agreed-upon transition period. Constitutionally, Centre-State fiscal relations come up for review quinquennially (once every five years). States have ceded significant taxing powers to the Centre via GST. Earlier, the states had their own tax bases and could manage revenues by juggling taxation policies. This led to a large number of state-specific tax rates, a lack of uniformity in the tax structure in the country, and sometimes, a race to very low-tax regimes to...

Financial Express A house is not merely a place to live and build a life, it is also one of the most significant assets of the family. An investment in a house roots a family to a location, giving them a significant stake in the development of the local area. Housing is a fundamental requirement of human existence. The requirement of shelter is so basic that in common parlance in India, it is clubbed together with food and clothing as the troika of basic human needs of roti, kapda, and makaan. It is no wonder that housing is a key social demand, and a priority area for governments, both at the Centre and the states. Housing as a socio-economic construct The development of housing is a function of the economic reality of a location and its era. India has seen, and will continue to see, significant urbanisation. Where people choose to live is a complex optimisation of how close houses are to their places of economic activity (work, business catchment area, etc), how conveniently...

Financial Express This requires confidence, coordination and capital; resolution can't be imposed using policy actions When commemorating anniversaries, we tend to reserve our special attention for round-number, decadal years. Last year, around this time, the world—and India—remembered and recounted its lessons from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) that reverberated across the globe in September 2008. Since it is the nature of history to repeat, but not to rhyme, decadal recounting of experiences and learnings serve as good markers, but may not be timed to perfection. The challenges in the local banking and non-banking finance companies 11 years post the GFC require us to take a relook at the learnings, especially, on the aspects that eventually led to the calming of the markets. India is nowhere near the situation that the world witnessed 11 years ago—however, GFC offers helpful pointers on how to navigate the sometimes choppy waters. The business of finance is built on t...

The Financial Express For the citizen to be confident, the state has to first believe that it can enforce the rule of law In Mumbai (and this may be true in many other cities in India), many traffic signals start blinking the yellow lights after around 10 pm. These traffic signals are not tucked away in the low density residential areas; they are a common sight on key arterial roads and dense junctions. The blinking yellow lights are supposed to signal to the traffic that they are on their own—the drivers and the pedestrians need to look out for their own selves: the state or the law will have been considered to have done its bit by warning them to slow down. The scenes at many such junctions left to fend for themselves suggest that the state abandoning its responsibility creates a low equilibrium for all its citizens. The traffic slows down, gridlocks emerge which take patience or fights to sort out, loud honking and road rage add a dash of rough music to the brew and pedestria...