The budget should have shown how serious it was about inclusive growth by announcing direct cash support to informal workers, circular migrants, agricultural labour, in addition to steady in-kind food transfers from the overflowing coffers of the FCI by making PDS universal.

In March 2021, India will complete five years since the adoption of the inflation targeting framework by the government and RBI. Analysing inflation data since 1996 using alternative models, this article argues that the ‘output gap model’ that underlies the current regime is not the best descriptor of inflation trends in India.

The government’s top priority, especially in a time of crisis, should be to cushion the blow with the provision of cash and in-kind transfers. Plus, special measures to boost demand for women’s work and concerted support to women’s self-employment and livelihood-generating activities need to be taken. Increased financial allocation to the rural employment guarantee scheme is necessary but not sufficient, as it would exclude urban women.

We see in it that gross fixed capital formation at constant prices actually increased in Quarter 2, indeed by a whopping 60 percent...Three other sources of expenditure exist, namely, exports, private final consumption expenditure and government final consumption expenditure. The first two show a substantial increase over their Quarter 1 levels but government final consumption expenditure actually declines by 25 percent over the same period. Could it be that the contraction in GDP would have been less but for this cut in government expenditure?

While there is a strong relationship between the death rate and public health expenditure, there is much less between the death rate and medical infrastructure in the public sector, be it hospitals or hospital beds per person. The clue to this most likely lies in the observation made by the well-known surgeon, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty that: “it is doctors who treat patients, not hospital beds” (NDTV, October 2, 2020).