Reflections

INCLUSIVE GOVERNANCE: THE NEW ZEALAND LSF EXPERIMENT Given below is a fascinating New Experiment by New Zealand in its Annual   Budget Exercise: The LSF - Living Standards Framework. {The following 2 paragraphs have been taken from the article “A Well-Being Fiscal Budget, Business Standard, 17 th July 2019, cross-verified and added on by an article from theconversation.com titled “New Zealand’s well-being approach to budget is not new, but could shift major issues”. I have further accessed a report presented by the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser The Treasury &   Office of the Government Statistician and Chief Executive, Stats NZ} An approach to national budgets which is radically different, and yet intuitively logical... it has 5 priorities: 1)     Transitioning to a Sustainable & Low-Emissions Economy 2)     Boosting innovation, and social and economic opportunities in a digital age 3)    ...

In the first part of the budget analysis, I looked at Health, Education and the Rural Economy ; in this, let me move onto the remaining aspects and points raised in the budget, leaving the Fiscal and Number aspects for the closing article to be taken up later. The first part dealt with the basics of a nation – these parameters are what establish Human Development, which is fundamental to any nation. Now, let me start the analysis with the MSME sector, which is, alongwith the unorganized sector, the largest contributor to employment as well as GDP. MEDIUM, SMALL AND MICRO ENTERPRISES {MSME} AND EMPLOYMENT {Pt 71-82} The budget, in points 71 & 72 on page 14, starts off with highlighting the credit aspects to MSMEs. This is where the disillusionment starts in my mind; having just perused the credit offtake scenario to the MSME segment {given in the Bibliography link nos 1 & 2}, which categorically makes a set of hard hitting points : a low proportion of manufactu...

This is the first part of a 3-part analysis on the Union Budget 2018-19, in which I propose to go into the basic strategy behind the budget, and look at its  pluses and the minuses pointwise – in two parts;. The third part will be the background, history and Macro-Economic Framework analysis, which has been my standard approach in studying the budget. And my first impression of this budget, was listening to it / reading about it, was “ interesting ”, but requires deeper analysis. My second impression, after talking to various people, reading extensive opinions, and going through the entire set of budget documents : “ Excellent Budget ” THE UPPER AND MIDDLE CLASSES A lot of my friends are disappointed in the budget; all of them are highly educated, and are from the top 10% of the population – exceptions prove the rule, so please excuse me. To them, I can only state: India is about the rest of the 90% as much as it is about us, privileged top of the heap. We, the people...

So far, I have looked at what could have been in terms of the budget; and the overall Macro-Economic Scenario and the Budget assumptions, and asked myself three questions : namely, in short. Will the budget give a boost to investment, demand and boost agriculture? But, before we move to looking at answering these questions, let me first of all appreciate and point out the most significant changes made from this year onwards : 1.     Merging Railway and Union Budgets 2.     Plan and Non Plan heads done away with, replaced by Capital and Revenue heads 3.     Moving forward of the date of budget presentation and unveiling 4.     This has gone unnoticed : rationalization of schemes, and focus on the key schemes I would also like to point out that, at least in those articles I read, there was not a sufficient presentation of the viewpoints of both sides, that is, for and against these changes given above. A detailed ...