Category: fiscal policy
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Three Capital Market Risks Flagged in Economic Survey 2025–26 But Missed in the Union Budget
India’s Economic Survey 2025–26 presented a clear warning: the capital market is entering a structurally volatile phase, shaped by global financial fragmentation, rising protectionism, and India’s rapid domestic financialisation. Yet, the Union Budget 2025–26 largely avoided engaging with these vulnerabilities, focusing instead on borrowings, incremental financial sector reforms, and targeted…
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Union Budget 2026
The Union Budget 2026–27 arrives at a moment when India stands at a crossroads—balancing ambition with inclusion, technology with tradition, and domestic priorities with global headwinds. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget Speech (February 1, 2026) sets out a bold restructuring of India’s growth journey with unprecedented clarityUnion Budget 2026–27: A…
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Fiscal Credibility at a Crossroads: India’s Consolidation Agenda in Economic Survey 2025–26
India’s Economic Survey 2025–26, Chapter 2—“Fiscal Developments: Anchoring Stability Through Credible Consolidation”—presents a decisive shift in the country’s macro-fiscal architecture. At a time when global economies are battling fiscal profligacy, debt overhang, and costly geopolitical uncertainty, India’s strategy seeks to build a new fiscal compact driven by credibility, transparency, and…
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Fiscal Policy Is Carrying the Growth Burden
For the first time in decades, the global economic cycle is being shaped less by the movements of central banks and more by the decisions of fiscal authorities. With monetary policy constrained by high inflation, elevated interest rates, and limited room for further tightening or easing, governments across both advanced…
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Mature Economies at the Edge: Monetary Ceilings and Industrial Decline
The End of Easy Money For over a decade following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, advanced economies relied heavily on ultra-loose monetary policies — near-zero interest rates, quantitative easing, and liquidity injections. These measures prevented economic collapse but also eroded the traditional tools of central banks.By the early 2020s, the…
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The Next Inflation–Debt Cycle: Lessons from History and Warnings for the Future
The global economy appears to be entering a new and uneasy phase of the inflation–debt cycle, one that could reshape how nations manage both public finance and household welfare. According to recent analyses in The Economist, advanced economies that once relied on cheap credit and stable prices now face the…
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Growth Without Guardrails: Why Economic Expansion Alone Can’t Prevent the Next Fiscal Crisis
The Mirage of Growth-Led Stability For decades, nations have treated economic growth as a cure-all for fiscal distress. From post-war Europe to the 1990s emerging markets boom, policymakers believed that sustained GDP growth would eventually reduce debt burdens and stabilize budgets. However, history repeatedly proved otherwise. The Latin American debt…
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GST 2.0: A Festival Season Reform With Global Ripples
The Indian economy has entered a new phase with the rollout of GST 2.0—a reform that simplifies the tax structure and aims to stimulate consumption at precisely the right moment: the onset of the festival season. Festivals in India have historically been linked with spikes in demand, particularly in retail,…
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India’s GST Reset: Can Simplification Fuel the Next Phase of Growth?
In September 2025, India unveiled one of the most significant reforms to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) since its launch in 2017. The GST Council’s decision to rationalize tax slabs, cut rates on essential items, and streamline compliance has been hailed as a “reset moment” for India’s tax architecture.…