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w w w.openthemagazine.com15 FEBRUARY 2021 / `50

15 february 2021 www.openthemagazine.com 3

contents15 february 2021

SHuSH NO MOreArt and infographics on social media

platforms are breaking taboosBy Shikha Kumar

88

‘THe rOLeS We PLay GIVe uS a beTTer uNDerSTaNDING Of PeOPLe,

reaLITy aND OurSeLVeS’Geetanjali Kulkarni on her journey from Marathi theatre to streaming platforms

By Namrata Joshi

STarGaZerBy Kaveree Bamzai

90 98

THE NEW DEALResetting the mindset By Haseeb Drabu & Anil Padmanabhan

‘ PEOPLE WANT THEIR GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE OPPORTUNITIES. THEY DON’T WANT TO CONSTANTLY LOOK TO IT FOR DOLES’Interview with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman By PR Ramesh

THE NEW CONSENSUSA blueprint for sustained growthBy Saugata Bhattacharya

FARMER FRIENDLYFood subsidy and Minimum Support Price data show the persistence of the government’s generosityBy Siddharth Singh

A SONG FOR THE UNSUNGIn doubling the allocation for MSMEs, the Budget has recognised their potential in creating employment and boosting growth By Dhirendra Tripathi

BECAUSE SMALL IS BIGWays to oxygenate micro enterprises By Rama Bijapurkar

OUT OF THE PANDEMICPutting healthcare centrestage is the first step in overhauling the system By Nikita Doval

SYNERGY AT LASTThe holistic budget combines health systems, water, sanitation, nutrition and air pollutionBy K Srinath Reddy

INVESTING IN TRUSTWhile the Budget seeks to ease last year’s pain, it wants companies and individuals to discipline themselves too By Dhirendra Tripathi

GO THE DISTANCEMore regulatory reforms instead of stimulus packages pleaseBy Rameesh Kailasam

THE ABCD OF FAILUREFrom disease to defence, why this Budget does not workBy Manpreet Singh Badal

OLÁ GOAAn allocation of Rs 300 crore to mark the 60th anniversary of the state’s liberation from the Portuguese is evidence of its outsized influenceBy Madhavankutty Pillai

NO ROADS FOR OLD CARSThe voluntary scrapping policy drives fear into the hearts of the country’s last Padmini and Ambassador ownersBy Lhendup G Bhutia

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DaNCING IN THe CITyBengaluru emerges as the new

capital of BharatanatyamBy Akhila Krishnamurthy

Cover by Saurabh Singh

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65 128 10 14 16

WHISPererBy Jayanta Ghosal

INDraPraSTHaBy Virendra Kapoor

LOCOMOTIfState of the gradualistBy S Prasannarajan

MuMbaI NOTebOOKBy Anil Dharker

SOfT POWerNivedita’s right to rebel

By Makarand R Paranjape

OPINIONThe rage

By Minhaz Merchant

OPeN eSSayThe rites of liberationBy Swapan Dasgupta

15 february 20214

red alert The months-long, ongoing peaceful agitation by farmers has suddenly taken a wrong turn (‘Rampage at Red Fort’, February 8th, 2021). The mayhem on Republic Day, the day we resolved to bind ourselves by the rules we gave ourselves in the Constitution, under the aegis of some activists, may have been because the police went soft on them, unlike what they are claiming, or because of the spontaneous excitement of some fringe elements. But the damage inflicted to the cause of the farmers has undermined whatever legitimacy it had prior to the Red Fort incident. The anarchy in Delhi on January 26th was shocking. The farm union leaders spearheading the protests cannot wash their hands of it. They need

[email protected]

to take control of what they have started.

Chanchal Nandy

Red Fort has been a mute witness to many historical events but what happened on January 26th, 2021 shall stand out for different reasons. The rampage seemed premeditated, given how smoothly the Sikh flag hoisting went. Having disrupted the daily routine in Delhi, the rioters ran back to Punjab taking advantage of the soft police. The nation has been shamed by their act. Unlike the much maligned Republicans in the US who gotto work to find the miscreants among themselves after the attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, our opposition leaders have shamelessly refused to condemn the act

and call for an end to the farmer protests. Their silence reveals their tacit complicity. The protests have become a ruse for nefarious causes. We don’t know why Rakesh Tikait actually cried just when he realised the police had gone back to its usual self, reacting with the force that it should have much earlier to prevent the Red Fort incident.

Ashok Goswami

balanced analysisBrahma Chellaney has filled an important gap in Indian commentary on recent political events in the US (‘A New Uncertainty’, February 1st, 2021). He brilliantly brought out in a balanced tone the deep polarisation in the US under the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden as well as the global strategic ramifications of the new administration, reversing many of Donald Trump’s foreign policies. The consequences for India are particularly critical, given the traditional pro-Beijing tilt of past Democratic administrations which have tried to maintain only a superficial image of American strength.

Sunil Tung

C letter of the week

Even 75 years after his ‘death’, Netaji’s contribution as a freedom fighter remains hotly debated for two reasons (‘Back to Bose’ by MJ Akbar, February 8th,

2021). One, successive Congress Governments have worked to undermine his role and never gave him due importance. Two, successive governments in

West Bengal have failed to push back hard enough against the Centre’s wilful amnesia, thus becoming

complicit in reducing the stature of Bose. BJP has resurrected him, maybe for political reasons and to tap the Bengali pride, but it is giving the Azad Hind Fauj leader the place he deserves. When former UK

Prime Minister Clement Attlee met then West Bengal Governor Justice PB Chakraborty in Kolkata in 1956,

the former had admitted that one reason they let India become free was because the British feared Netaji. Congress has tried to kill Netaji’s memory even as

conspiracy theories involving his death continue to pop up. While most historians look down upon ‘what

if’ historical debates given that figuring out actual history itself is so difficult, it does help all of us to

reimagine our present. Bholey Bhardwaj

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www.openthemagazine.com 515 february 2021

he context makes all the difference to the text—you may add the prefixes of sub- and meta- this time—of nirmala sitharaman’s Budget. While she was presenting her proposals for growth and modernisation in Parliament, elsewhere in Delhi,

a protest with archaic demands was playing out, gathering support from those who were desperate for the theatre of resistance—and, as argued in this space last week, suffering from modi Derangement syndrome. the siege of Red Fort came after the Government had surrendered by putting its agricultural modernisation agenda in deep freeze. the protest, which is now endorsed by celebrity hashtags and added to social media’s rage index, demands the death of one of this Government’s bolder modernisation programmes. In sitharaman’s Budget speech, modi kind of framed his reply, not to farmers alone, but to all those who are still struggling to define his mind.

the pandemic has provided the other context, a bigger one. a world infected and bereaved largely reacted to the economic cost of it by ‘stimulus politics’ and ‘cheque compassion’, and both invariably came after the initial failures in comprehending the enormity of the crisis. some leaders pooh-poohed the alarmism of others; some ridiculed the experts; some showed respect to science; and some, rising above partisan politics, had the right words of leadership. modi, whose trust quotient is higher than most elected leaders in a democracy today, first played the sermoniser, and followed up the wise man’s words with the politics of compassion, all the while giving the experts unrestrained mandate. he rejected the playbook of populism, which mixes sentimentalism and ruthlessness with an autocrat’s efficiency. When sitharaman’s Budget strayed from the hoary tradition of sop salvation, it was in tune with the prime minister’s philosophy of gradualism in modernisation: no instant therapy, and no desperation for buying happiness. the health package in the Budget, even while responding to the post-pandemic India with administrative empathy and urgency, avoided policy mawkishness. India, considering the state of its civic infrastructure and social disparity, is coming out of the pandemic still gasping for oxygen. the Budget reacted to the moment by addressing the fundamentals of healthcare.

It revealed the gradualist at work, again. and it’s a sight that continues to frustrate those who have been expecting to see the

same kind of poetic flourish that set candidate modi apart on the stump in Prime minister modi too. he moved cautiously, not tentatively. It was the caution of a gradualist who disappointed those who were looking for a version of Reagan or thatcher with a hindu nationalist accent. In an unequal country like India, which has not yet achieved the kind of economic stability needed to hold a full-fledged free marketeer, that was an irrational expectation. Did it mean it was the onset of hindu socialism after the free run of the original that blunted India’s growth? true, the Right always won the economic argument and lost the culture war. In power, modi, like any other cautious pragmatist who resisted the temptations of ideology, chose the centre, and at times, lived up to the truism that expediencies of governance make all of them a bit socialist. By being unsentimental towards the public sector and discarding the accumulated xenophobia in foreign investment, sitharaman’s Budget has shown remarkable market confidence. the gradualist has gained momentum.

Is it that the state is retreating? Is it that necessary socialism of the pragmatist is in pause? such questions are out of place in a world where claimants to the benevolent state are in the ascendant—call it the Bernie sanders syndrome. the pandemic has spawned a new variety of progressivism in which, as provider and protector, the state should be the most righteous arbiter. We may have been spared such extremism, but we too are fast realising the increasing inevitability of a knowing state in our lives. the problem is with the custodians of the state that knows better—remember that familiar figure of the pandemic leader rearmed? We have been spared such a leadership too. still, the welfare state is in vogue again, shedding its ideological pretensions. thanks to the virus, it’s not incompatible with the Right any longer.

the story has many national variations. seven years ago modi added a big dose of nationalism to the Indian idea of freedom. It was his way of liberating the Indian story from all those borrowed isms that swayed the original nation-builders. his campaign invocation of a congress-free India was more

than a call for defeating India’s natural party of governance. It was a call for a nationalist reclamation of India, but without bringing gods to the arena. It was the argument of a hindu nationalist as moderniser that won the elections of 2014. he has not stopped arguing; he has not stopped campaigning. nirmala sitharaman has just read out another winning argument of her boss. n

T

LOCOMOTIF

by S PRASANNARAJAN

State of the GradualiSt

15 february 20216

RetuRning to Delhi after a pollution break of three

months in goa, one finds the capital under siege. the coronavirus is still in the air. the AQi levels still hover in the hazardous zone. But, then, it is hard to live long away from your roots. Delhi is karambhoomi; whatever the evil combination of uncaring babus, cynical politicians and helpless farmers and others might do to poison the air we breathe, i shall stay loyal to Delhi, my Dilli. there is some intangible mystique about the city; it decays and degenerates and yet, unlike some other metropolises, Delhi alone seems to be able to renew and regenerate itself, with its satellite towns like gurugram, Sonipat, ghaziabad, even Meerut beginning to share its burdens and, as a result, being compensated richly in higher real estate value and a reflected glory of the national capital. (By the way, Sonipat, for long known only for the Atlas cycle factory, is turning out to be the new Mecca of education with some of the most elite private universities, including the stellar Ashoka, setting up base there.) Delhi seems to have a huge capacity for embracing in itself all others on its fringes, a luxury unavailable to Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, etcetera.

though the elite watering holes have opened their doors, the sahibs are still playing truant, to be seen rarely. the only people who feel genuinely relieved are the employees of these establishments, having spent months living in trepidation of losing their jobs. A casual visit to the india international Centre (iiC) and the habitat Centre revealed that normalcy is still some time away. Aside from the diehard

regulars who are beginning to put an occasional appearance in the Covid-altered environs, with seating in tea lounge and dining halls drastically reduced, and the novelty of the menu card being printed afresh for each patron in the iiC, the fear of contracting the infection still keeps most members away. however, the bigger surprise was the gymkhana Club. in all my years visiting the elite club as a guest of a couple of covenanted bureaucrat members with whom i have grown up since the days in Delhi university, this was the first time i found the club staff genuinely welcoming all visitors, a token of appreciation for daring to risk contracting the infection and braving the biting cold.

As it is, a large majority of regulars at the club are well past their sell-by-date, having long been pensioned off and living off dearness allowance-linked monthly remittances from the hard-pressed taxpayers. it is a travesty of the system that pensions of retired secretaries, DgPs, igs, should exceed the monthly take-home of mid-level Class i government officers. of course, i shouldn’t complain, having eaten out regularly thanks to their generosity. to be fair, even when needled regularly by yours truly about the

iniquitous system of retirement benefits that they themselves had put in place, there is no trace of resentment. that is how life-long relationships are forged, isn’t it? And one last thing. in all these years, i have never seen the restaurant staff so eager to please. Well past the shut-down hour, they cooked a fine meal especially for us, a sign of the near-deserted bars and dining halls these days due to the pandemic.

While still on the coronavirus, the question being increasingly asked is when and where one was getting the vaccine. i have not thought about it though wife is certain that as a fully-paid member of the tiny and fast dwindling Parsi community, she has some special claim on the vaccines made by Adar Poonawalla’s Serum institute of india. By the way, why Poonawalla? if he followed how his ancestors kept their surnames, basing it on the profession they were engaged in, he would actually be a ‘Vaccinewalla’. he makes the vaccines for half the world and has said that giving a couple of thousand—for that few are the numbers of Parsis in the country or, for that matter, on earth—on a priority basis to his fellow jaatwallas, should be no problem. As for myself, well, i am in no hurry. not exerting myself for anything in life being a characteristic, i am unlikely to make an effort to get the jab. if it is offered in the normal course, i may go for it. not otherwise. though i must say some people in my social circle are pulling strings to get the vaccine ahead of the priority groups. it seems even the coronavirus cannot slay the VViP genome usually found in indians, can it? n

INDRAPRASTHAvirendra kapoor

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15 february 20218

The suiTs have it! When the sensex climbs giddily upward,

you know who the Budget is for. and when the polished guys who expertly look at the esoterica of economic numbers in television studios and tell us that the Budget is good for us, we know it’s good for them. and best of all, finally Nirmala sitharaman, Master’s at JNu notwithstanding, has shown that her heart is in the Right place.

Who are we to quibble? The suits have spoken, the captains of industry have delivered their pronouncements and the pink papers have shouted in orgiastic glee, so they must all be right. For them the Budget contained such delights as no new Covid tax, no wealth tax and no super-rich tax. What if the budget announced a cut of Rs 6,000 crore from the already inadequate education allocation, with school education being hit with a Rs 5,000 crore cut? after all, that only concerns children who don’t go to plush iB schools, or even ordinary private schools. in any case when they grow up, these children will never become suits; their future is to add to india’s unemployed numbers and become just another statistic the suits can ignore. as they ignored the Budget cuts to food subsidy and to MGNReGs, both of which are crucial to marginal rural farmers, migrants and the urban poor, all of who have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic.

The state of Maharashtra feels aggrieved because its needs have been completely ignored: even Mumbai’s real estate sector has got no relief from GsT, or tax breaks for locked down construction projects, even though it’s one industry which employs millions of unskilled men and women and could have done with a

little help from its friends. if only Ma-harashtra had the sense to announce an election like Bengal, assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, budgetary alloca-tions would have come flooding in!

MuMBai’s suBuRBaN TRaiN services, what the locals call

‘locals’, after a full ten-month gap, were opened to all on February 1st, and as expected (and feared), men, women and children of all ages, shapes and sizes came rushing back heaving masked sighs of relief. On the very first day, 3.4 million travelled, which was astonishing when you consider the restricted timings for the general public: they can travel only before 7 am, and after 9 pm, with a 12 noon to 4 pm slot in between.

Let’s figure that out. People will have to come to work really, really early, well before offices open, and leave really, really late, well after their offices have shut. Or is Mumbai spilling over with the milk of human kindness, and soft-hearted employers will let their staff leave really, really early to catch the 4 pm local?

With the resumption of trains something else that will resume is death on the tracks. ‘it’s a matter of grave concern,’ said the Times of India, choosing its words carefully. activists who, er, keep track of these things tell us that between 2013 and 2020, there were 23,000 ‘railway deaths’ (for want of a better phrase). That’s over 3,000 every year. Last year, with the trains locked down, only 730 perished. The

causes of railway deaths are various: falling off trains, being hit by electric-ity poles while leaning out, falling in the gap between compartment and platform, electrocution and even sui-cide, although to me most of the other causes mentioned seem to be a form of suicide. By the way, these numbers don’t include those killed while being hit by trains while crossing railway tracks, possibly because no one wants to pick the pieces up to count them.

how do you stop this mayhem? an obvious solution is to stop all trains, but for reasons unknown, neither Western Railway nor Central Railway are willing to consider this. another is to drum sense into passen-ger heads, but apparently that’s been tried without success.

‘BaL ThaCKeRay TOWeRs over Colaba,’ said the headline

which is pretty restrictive for some-one generally referred to as the shiv sena supremo, and who at one time towered over the whole of Maharash-tra. Death diminishes us all.

The news item referred to the stat-ue unveiled recently at the prominent Regal Circle (formally called shyama Prasad Mukherji Chowk). it’s made of bronze (the statue, not the junction), so it shines with an orange glow. it stands on a 14-foot pedestal and is 9 feet tall, so ‘towering’ is the right word. it bears the inscription ‘Jamlelya majhya tamam Hindu bandhavano, bhaginino ani matano’ (‘all my hindu brothers, sisters and mothers gathered here’). if that sounds like the beginning of a speech, it is: apparently that’s the way Bal Thackeray began all his speeches. Now standing there, arms aloft, he will forever be about to speak to us, of course, provided we belong to the mentioned categories of people. n

MuMbai NotebookAnil Dharker

Cancer Incidence is increasing in inappropriate variations throughout the World. As per Latest data this year 1 in

10 /15 people will have Cancer which has crossed Cardiovascular Disease, which used to be having highest Incidence in South Asian Countries. Around more than ten lakh population are new cases diagnosed due to Cancer in India. This result in a massive hue and cry to look for Causes and factors which can be prevented to decrease cancer incidence.

Amongst the causes Tobacco Alcohol Life style are dominant Causes for Cancer Incidence. But its worthwhile to correlate GI Cancer Incidence which is on rise as per recent Globocan Data, with Diet. Present Globocan Data has shown increased cases of GI Cancers like, Stomach, Esophagus, Colorectal Cancers in India.

Diet plays a major role in causation of GI Cancers. It has been seen that Upper GI

Cancers are more in South India because of use of hot Spices. Similarly incidence of Esophageal Cancers are high in High altitude due to use of hot drinks to avoid cold in hills. Same in Colorectal Cancers, Use of Red Meat and Junk food have lead to increase in incidence of Obesity and Colorectal Cancers. Its Westernisation of Life style and Dietary pattern which is responsible for Colorectal Cancers. It has been seen that Vegeterian diet is protective for Colorectal and Stomach Cancers. Alcohol plays a major Role in GI cancers as it lead to changes in Gastric and Colonic mucosal changes. So Alcohol and Tobacco needs to be avoided.

Childhood obesity is a menace worldwide and Its our moral duty to train our children to avoid junk food which is quite common with Pizza, Burger, Mcrony which are pure causes of Childhood obesity and in long run will lead to obesity related cancers,

Colorectal Cancer is one of prominent Obesity related Cancers. Similarly it has been seen that consumption of red meat leads to Colorectal cancer incidence rise, Stomach cancer are also relatively higher in north east area because of typical intake of burnt meat or smoked meat consumtion is very high in NE region especially in Assam, Tripura and Nagaland.Even hilly people smoke more to beat cold and leads to changes in esophageal mucosa and esophaseal dysplasia to startwith later on turns to Cancer.

Overall it has been seen that Vegeterian Diet is very protective to Gut and will result in less Incidence of GI Cancers. So we should adapt our Ancestors to have Vegeterian Diet to avoid Cancers. Although it can not Immune from GI cancers but Incidences are low in Vegeterian population. Kababs are very attractive diet in few areas of India ultimately, its Burnt Red Meat. Complete avoidance should be practiced. Its high time we go back to our old habit of Vegetarian Diet (Satwik Bhojan)and Stay away from cancer. Physical Exercise and Fresh fruits also gives lots of oxidants to beat Cancer.<

By Dr Rudra Prasad Acharya Sr Consultant, Surgical Oncology

Batra Cancer Centre, Batra Hospital, New Delhi.

Avenues

Dr Rudra Prasad Acharya

Key Points in toDAys HeAltHy Diet7

1. Avoid Junk Food2. Avoid Red Meat3. Vegeterian Diet preferred4. Avoid spicy food5. Avoid very hot drinks6. Alcohol and Tobacco – a big No.7. Whole cereals back again

DIET AND CANCER IN RECENT TIMES

I AM AND I WILL

15 february 202110

I t had been a wonderful, most unworldly, summer of 1898 for nivedita, despite its ups and downs. From Swami Vivekananda she received lessons galore in spiritual life, some too deep for thought or expression.

as she recalled in The Master as I Saw Him, it was in Kashmir that she understood the immensity and grandeur of the truth behind appearances: ‘the world, in all its aspects and relations, is but a childish interruption of the flow of thought. behind ev-erything is felt to be that unutterable fullness, of which the thing seen is so paltry and distorted an expression’ (bit.ly/3oJUO2B).

her master, Vivekananda, was not like other ordinary mor-tals. he was made of a different substance. For such as he was, ‘human relations are too poor to tempt those who have bathed in the wellspring of all such relations at the Ultimate Source’ (ibid). While ‘love or compassion or heroism’ might be ways to reach or reflect the ‘Ultimate Source’, the only thing that really defined it was the unwavering ‘perception of Oneness, and that alone’ (ibid).

nivedita learnt the hard way that ‘steadiness and quiet and self-effacement’ were probably more desirable virtues to culti-vate than an active or aggressive expression, ‘prized in the West’ (ibid), of one’s temperament or disposition. She understood, instead, that at least as far as the spiritual life that she had so read-ily and devotedly embarked upon, being ‘consistently indifferent to our own personality’ (ibid), might be preferable.

the world itself, Swamiji said quoting Plato, was but a ‘feeble manifestation of the great ideas which alone are real and perfect’ (ibid). For Vivekananda, falling short of the ideal was no reason to give up or despair: ‘the attempt falls short still in many ways. Still, – go on! You will interpret the ideal someday’ (ibid). In contrast to the Western idea of progress, Vivekananda held that ‘things do not grow better. they remain as they were, and we grow better, by the changes we make in them’ (ibid). Growing better, progressing ourselves was practical Vedanta. the world would change on its own.

For nivedita, that statement had the very ring of the Vedas. even karma, inexorable as it might be, could not deter the soul’s advancement and evolution. nivedita remembered how, back in almora, an elderly and amiably enfeebled gentleman had asked the Swami what was to be done when the strong oppressed the

weak. turning on him in ‘surprised indignation’, Vivekananda had roared, ‘Why thrash the strong, of course! You forget your own part in this karma. – Yours is always the right to rebel!’ (ibid).

In a sense, it was nivedita’s ‘right to rebel’, even though her master wasn’t exactly oppressing her. Instead, as she saw when they visited hindu holy places, he became one with the hum-blest of the uneducated women devotees, making ‘the same offerings of milk and rice’, telling his beads and scrupulously observing ‘the minutest rules of conduct, both secular and religious’ (ibid).

Of the two most sacred of sites in Kashmir, the group had already visited Kshir bhavani. now, what remained was the trek to amarnath, the ‘mountain-cave’ of the ‘ice-emblem of Siva’ (ibid).at achhabal, in the Mogul Gardens, during a meal outdoors, Vivekananda suddenly announced his intention to go to amarnath.

his biography by ‘eastern and Western disciples’ records that ‘as a special privilege Sister nivedita was allowed to join him on the pilgrimage, so that she, as a future worker, might have a direct knowledge and insight into that time-honoured religious insti-tution of his country’ (bit.ly/2YLmvxz). the rest of the european party would go only as far as Pahalgam, waiting there for the return of Vivekananda and nivedita.

In order to make their final preparations, the group retreated to their houseboats in Islamabad. With the aid of a state officer, the whole group left the next afternoon, on July 26th, for Pawan. It was ‘the first stopping-place on the way to the sacred shrine of amarnath’ (ibid).

Kashmir was full of pilgrims during that period. everywhere, they witnessed ‘the march of gathering hosts’ (bit.ly/3cJ1ADp). the pilgrims encamped in the open fields in neat and orderly rows. by the next morning, they left, gathering all their belong-ings, leaving ‘no trace of their occupation, save the ashes of their cooking-fires’ (ibid). Quite in contrast to plastic-filled mess and garbage that modern tourists leave, almost as an identifying signature of their presence.

nivedita marvelled at how the amarnath yatris ‘carried a bazaar with them, and at each halting place, the pitching of tents, and opening of shops, took place with incredible rapidity’ (ibid). the camp had a ‘broad street’ running through its middle, where

Nivedita’s Right to RebelVivekananda and the Himalayan connection—Part IX

By Makarand R Paranjape

soft power


‘one could buy dried fruits, milk, dahls, and rice’ (ibid). nivedita’s and Vivekananda’s tents were separated by the tehsildar’s in the middle. that is where they lit the evening fire and gathered at dusk.

the hundreds of monks in gerua (ochre), with their umbrella-size saffron tents, seemed to gravitate around the magnetic personality of Vivekananda: ‘the more learned of them swarmed about him at every halting place, filling his tent, and remaining absorbed in conversation, throughout the hours of day light’ (ibid).

the monks failed to understand the warmth of Vivekanan-da’s ‘love and sympathy for Mohammedanism’ while they refused to make distinctions between ‘Swadesh and bidesh’ (ibid). For Vivekananda, hindu and Muslim were ‘rival elements’ in the same unity that was India. but the monks remembered how ‘the soil of the Punjab… was drenched with the blood of those who

had died for the faith’ (ibid). they expected from Vivekananda a ‘nar-

row orthodoxy’ (ibid) in this regard. nivedita couldn’t help observing how ‘the tehsildar himself, and many officers and servants of the pilgrimage’ were Muslims ‘and that no one had dreamt of objecting to their entering the Cave with the hindu worshippers’ (ibid). as to her master, she considered him ‘an anachronism of the future’, someone so ahead of his own times and its prejudices.as it happened, the tehsil-dar, ‘came afterwards, indeed, with a group of friends, begging formal acceptance by the Swami as disciples’ (ibid).

approaching the sacred springs of bawan, nivedita recalls ‘the brilliance of the lights re-flected in the clear black waters of the tank that evening, and throngs of pilgrims proceeding in little groups from shrine to shrine’ (ibid). It was a classic scene from a timeless Indian past. the devotion to the divine, the longing for higher conscious still alive in common pilgrims and advanced sanyasis alike.

When they reached Pahalgam, the entire camp halted for day to observe the ekadashi vrat. nivedita has left us a vivid description of it:

‘It was a beautiful little ravine floored, for the most part with sandy islands in the pebble-worn bed of a mountain stream. the slopes about it were dark with pine-trees, and over the mountain at its head was seen, at sunset, the moon, not yet full. It was the scenery of Switzerland or norway, at their gentlest and loveliest. here we saw the last of human dwell-ings, a bridge, a farm house, with its ploughed fields, and a few saeter-huts [huts built on high pastures in Scandinavia] and here, on a grassy knoll, when the final march began, we left the

rest of our party encamped’ (ibid).travelling via Islamabad, Pahalgam, Chandanwari, Seshnaag

and Panchtarani, the duo finally reached amarnath on august 2nd, 1898.

For the pilgrimage, nivedita had taken on the role of Vive-kananda’s ‘spiritual daughter’ though there was hardly an age difference of five years between them. ‘In my own case,’ she observed, ‘the position ultimately taken proved that most happy one of a spiritual daughter, and as such I was regarded by all the Indian people and communities, whom I met during my Master's life’ (ibid).

but would that repositioning of their roles and the reinven-tion of her own personality cure her of her attachment to her master and its attendant expectations? these had reached their peak by the time they arrived at amarnath.

(To be continued) n

Nivedita learNt the hard way that ‘steadiNess aNd quiet aNd self-effacemeNt’ were probably more desirable virtues to cultivate thaN aN active or aggressive expressioN, ‘prized iN the west’, of oNe’s temperameNt or dispositioN. she uNderstood, iNstead, that at least as far as the spiritual life that she had so readily aNd devotedly embarked upoN, beiNg ‘coNsisteNtly iNdiffereNt to our owN persoNality’, might be preferable

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12 15 february 2021

The anger runs deep. It isn’t directed against injustice. It isn’t aimed at a set of ideas. It is directed against one individual: Prime Minister

narendra Modi. For nearly seven years, Modi has upended the nehruvian

consensus. Those who benefited from the old corrupt political continuum—financial, ideological and dynastic—are angry that a chaiwala has ended that lazy, lucrative continuum.

Of course, they dare not call the prime minister a chaiwala anymore. They know how he used the epithet hurled at him on the eve of the 2014 general election to his advantage.

They obsess over him in private conversation. The anger rises in tandem with Modi’s electoral popularity. Modi has not been the perfect prime minister. Far from it. early in his premiership, I wrote this: ‘The most successful leaders surround themselves with people smarter than themselves. Modi, in contrast, is surrounded by people who are not smarter than him. That is, perhaps, the biggest failing of his prime ministership.’

I have long criticised Modi’s macro-economic policies, the lack of talent in his Cabinet and the poor communications protocol of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Modi has failed to get the law ministry to speed up prosecution of allegedly corrupt opposition leaders. Cases are allowed to meander because government-appointed public prosecutors either don’t turn up in court or advance weak arguments at hearings.

a striking example is the 2g case which was mishandled by the public prosecutor anand grover. The Modi government changed the prosecutor only after the court had acquitted the accused, including former Telecom Minister a raja and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader K Kanimozhi, party founder M Karunanidhi’s daughter.

The cases against former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and his son Karthi Chidambaram involving aircelMaxis and allegedly benami foreign properties are in limbo.

More pointedly, the rs 2,000-crore National Herald property case against the gandhis—in which two of the accused, rahul gandhi and sonia gandhi, are out on bail—remains in hibernation at the trial stage.

What does all this add up to? Wilful delays by an old ecosystem that still has the power to block Modi’s anti-corruption agenda? Complicity between that old, corrupt

ecosystem and the new ecosystem that Modi has created but lacks full control over? Or something even more sinister?

Whatever the truth, this state of affairs can’t go on. Modi believes that macro-economic policies matter less electorally than micro-economic schemes. he is the archetypal executor. give him a project—new or old—and he will pursue it to completion with frequent reviews and micro-management.

Meanwhile, BJP’s stormtroopers are allowed to whip up majoritarian sentiment. Modi’s attention is fixated on three elections: West Bengal in 2021, uttar Pradesh in 2022 and the Lok sabha in 2024. Modi believes a combination of welfare benefits for the poor, largescale infrastructure projects and muscular hinduism will deliver to him a third term.

he may be right. The opposition privately thinks so too. hence the anger. The vitriol comes from the top: rahul gandhi, akhilesh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee who stand to lose the most from Modi’s continued popularity.

The Indian media is torn: on one side is the supplicatory media that flatters Modi; on the other is the viscerally hostile media that rages at him.

Foreign journalists have never come to terms with a prime minister who gives them little importance and pays them no

attention. They react with venom. however, by not focusing adequately on the real issues

where Modi has actually failed—Cabinet talent, macro-economics, poor communications—they reveal both incompetence and bias. They remain fixated on Modi’s majoritarianism. a critical eye obviously needs to be cast on that but not at the expense of other key failures.

an article by an Indian journalist in The Washington Post reveals the venom that seeps through commentary on Modi: ‘Our country continues its march to complete submission before a demagogue who is not afraid to establish dominance through the power of the mob.’

Journalists burdened with ill will against Modi often begin an article on, for example, urban housing but at the end, almost mesmerised by their rage, bring Modi into the argument, however removed he is from the central discourse. It would be comical were it not such a

severe indictment of their professionalism and integrity. n

opinion

Minhaz Merchant is an author, editor and publisher

The RageBy Minhaz Merchant

Modi may be right. The opposition privately thinks so too. Hence the anger

Those who benefited from the old corrupt political continuum— financial, ideological and dynastic—are

angry that a chaiwala has ended that lazy, lucrative continuum

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Whisperer Jayanta Ghosal

15 february 2021

In the coming West Bengal Assembly election, former Trinamool Congress leader and minister Suvendu Adhikari is getting prime importance in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which he has just joined. Last month, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Kolkata, at a tea party, he came to the table where Adhikari was sitting and they talked separately for about 10 minutes. Adhikari was a member of Parliament earlier and had interacted with Modi a few times as a Trinamool leader. Home Minister Amit Shah is also very favourably disposed towards him and invited him to Delhi to attend BJP’s core group meeting. Mamata Banerjee pulled a surprise when she announced her decision to contest from Nandigram, the stronghold of Adhikari. The question now is whether he will take on the challenge. BJP is keen that he should not be solely engaged in one constituency and must campaign in all areas given his political stature.

BJP’s Bengal Favourite

Exploiting thE Sting

Before the West Bengal election, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is reportedly trying to file a

chargesheet in the Narada sting operation, in which many Trinamool Congress leaders were caught tak-ing money on camera. CBI recently sought permission from the West Bengal governor to include the names of three more ministers in the case before finalising the chargesheet. If the governor gives that permission with-out the sanction of the state government, it will lead to a fresh war between the two. Possibly, it will be Delhi that will take a political call on this.

old BondsCongress leaders across India still remember Ahmed Patel, party President Sonia Gandhi’s key lieutenant, who passed away in November 2020. Recently, his daughter Mumtaz Patel visited Jaipur for a personal reason. She was staying at a Congress minister’s home. The minister informed Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot who immediately called and invited Mumtaz to his res-idence, where she met him and his family. Since returning to Delhi, she has been telling everyone about Gehlot’s hospitality.


I l lustrations by SauraBh Singh

2021 is important to Bangladesh as it will mark 50 years of the 1971 liberation war with Pakistan and

the freedom struggle that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s first prime minister, led. Recently, Bangladesh’s foreign secretary came to India and met his Indian counterpart. It has been decided that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Dhaka on March 26th and the next day, there will be a bilateral meeting between the two countries.

Is Jyotiraditya Scindia still waiting for a Cabinet berth or busy with Madhya Pradesh politics? He has

become very active in the Gwalior and Chambal areas of the state, doing padayatras and political meetings. He also went to Morena, the Lok Sabha constituency of Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar. Twenty-five people had died there recently after drinking poisonous liquor. Scindia met the affected families and gave Rs 50,000 to each of them. He also assured strong action by the state government against the accused. But it is being said Tomar was not happy about this ‘encroachment’ on his territory.

in Solidarity

Turf Encroachment

In Maharashtra politics, Aurangzeb has become

a flashpoint for the ruling alliance. The Shiv Sena wants to rename Aurangabad, which is named after the Mughal emperor. They want it called Sambhajinagar, after the son of the Maratha emperor Shivaji. The Congress is not in favour of it. Sena’s mouthpiece Saamana criticised the Congress in strong language for Muslim appeasement. Sharad Pawar, who leads the Nationalist Congress Party, the third partner in the coalition, has not revealed his stand on the issue so far.

name of the game

Managing anna

thE CD RumouR

Over the past few months, there have been whispers in Karnataka’s political circles about

a CD. Nobody knows its content but every BJP leader thinks it is detrimental to Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa. After he expanded his cabinet last month, these rumours have peaked. The first time talk about the CD started was in November 2020 after Yediyurappa’s grandnephew and political secretary, NR Santosh, was hospitalised, it is believed, after an attempt at suicide. Now it is being gossiped that Yediyurappa accommodated leaders in his cabinet who were threatening him with the CD.

Shawl muSingS

In South Block, officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of External Affairs are busy

speculating on a Kashmiri shawl. Recently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chaired a meeting wearing a shahtoosh shawl and the image went viral as a fashion statement. Since the shawl is banned in India and its possession is punishable, no one still knows where Salman got it. Indian bureaucrats are scratching their heads over this.

Devendra Fadnavis might be down

politically at the mo-ment, but he is find-ing ways to be useful for his party. BJP has steadily lost ground in Maharashtra, the recent example being the poor showing in the panchayat polls. But Fadnavis proved his skills at backroom manipulation in persuading Anna Hazare to call off his proposed fast in support of the farmers’ protests. Amit Shah had told Fadnavis to talk to Hazare personally and Fadnavis managed to dissuade Hazare.

15 february 202116

For those old enough to remember the 1970s and 1980s, the Union Budget was invariably covered in a ritual of speculation, excitement and turmoil. As the final day of

February approached—it was Narendra Modi’s Government that brought the Budget calendar forward—a wave of rumours, some based on nothing in particular, gripped the country. some items that were favourite targets of the taxman either disappeared from the shop counter—cigarette hoarding was a compulsive sport—or were greeted with short-term panic buying—filling up petrol could sometimes save a couple of hundred rupees. rumours guided the movement of stocks. Business leaders awaited the Budget with tension and did instant back-of-the-envelope calculations of possible impact of excise duty modifications. Chambers of Commerce organised gatherings of industrialists on the Budget day to collectively digest the bad news and, on a few occasions, the unexpected, good news. there was even a glamour quotient attached to securing a visi-tor’s pass for the lok sabha galleries and the finance minister’s family was the target of media coverage.

even the politicians reacted to the Budgets in a predictable manner. A dose of heavy taxation was accompanied by the argu-ment that the government was promoting equity or redistribution of income, the underlying message being that the well-off and the rich deserved to be squeezed. the opposition in turn was quick to describe any Budget as anti-people, anti-growth and inflationary. As an opposition leader with little interest in economics, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a stock answer to queries on the Budget: “Garib ke pet pe laath maar diya.”

the most informed alternative view came from outside Parliament, from the distinguished constitutional lawyer Nani Palkhivala. his annual lectures on the Budget had audiences pack the Brabourne stadium in Mumbai and the Netaji Indoor sta-dium in Kolkata for an economic vision that upheld efficiency, probity and private enterprise. As for the economists, with notable exceptions, the preoccupation was with plan and non-plan expenditure and bolstering the inefficient public sector.

the predictability, alas, didn’t extend to the government’s management of its finances. the over-regulated Indian economy kept business, trade and taxpayers on tenterhooks as successive governments toyed with schemes to spend more and more in an environment of low growth and with little concern for the quality of expenditure. Budgets were a moment of dread for India, unless of course you were lucky enough to be in the inner circle of decision-making.

Fortunately, the bad old days have long passed. there were two important milestones in the passage to liberation. First, the process of deregulation of the economy that was initiated by the PV Narasimha rao Government as a response

The Modi government held its nerve and enhanced India’s faith in itselfThe RiTes of LibeRaTion

by swapan DasgupTa

open essay

OpenOmics 2021


Prime minister narendra modi sPeaks about the union budget in new delhi, February 1

Throughout the lockdown period and after, there was a clamour among economists for the Government to abandon its policy of fiscal restraint and pour cash into the hands of people—an approach that they felt would kickstart a spluttering economy. The Modi Government, however, had other ideas

pib

15 february 202118

to a huge balance of payments crisis that prompted India to mortgage some of its gold reserves, led to the Government attaching priority to the private corporate sector and foreign capital. Wealth creation became a priority. In effect, this meant that the non-state sector and individual taxpayers could no longer be regarded as milch cows. the sharp reduc-tion of personal and corporate tax rates from the punitive levels they had reached during the high noon of Indira Gandhi’s socialism also meant that there were incentives for tax compliance. By implication this meant that Budget pro-visions couldn’t be couched in dollops of unpredictability. A stable business environment meant that revenue generation had to follow a predictable path and also be linked to the future of wealth creation. It is a matter of satisfaction that the broad parameters of this approach chalked out in 1991 have been broadly adhered to, a notable exception being the regressive retrospective tax imposed by Pranab Mukherjee under the Manmohan singh Government.

the seCoNd MIlestoNe was the enactment of the Goods and services tax (Gst) after prolonged negotia-

tions between the Centre and the states in 2016. the constitu-tional impact of Gst was profound. since this was a national tax aimed at removing a multitude of local taxes imposed by the states, it meant that both the Centre and the states had to abandon absolute sovereignty and pool their sovereign powers in a Gst Council. In practical terms this meant that the power to impose new taxes or modify existing rates no longer vested in the Budget, making it more predictable. An unintended, although natural, consequence of the Gst was to undermine the importance of the revenue section of the Budget. since changes in indirect taxes, except in petroleum products and alcoholic beverages, could only be sanctioned by the Gst Council, involving all the states and the Centre, the element of surprise and unpredictability was taken out of the Budget. this complemented the trend set by Vishwanath Pratap

singh’s Budget in 1985 of lowering the rates of personal taxes to levels that discouraged innovative accountancy to evade having to pay the exchequer.

since he assumed charge in May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi added his own touch to public finance.

First, while persisting with the overall philosophy of low taxes, he put greater emphasis on enhanced compliance. Using technology to full effect, the finance ministry created the architecture that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for both individuals and businesses to make banking transactions difficult without a Personal Account Number (PAN). Conse-quently, and particularly after demonetisation, the numbers of individuals filing personal income tax returns and businesses filing their Gst returns registered a sharp increase. the widen-ing of the tax base negated the need to raise tax rates to cover up revenue shortfalls.

second, the increase in India’s GdP after the opening up of the economy witnessed a simultaneous increase in both the states’ and Centre’s expenditure on welfare spending. Flushed with funds that were unimaginable during the heyday of socialism, successive governments focussed on extending a helping hand to the poor and vulnerable. the Vajpayee Govern-ment concentrated on upgrading India’s creaking infrastruc-ture, believing, quite rightly, that this would have a trickle-down effect. the Manmohan singh Government, influenced by sonia Gandhi’s mother bountiful approach, sought to create handouts but without much concern for delivery.

Modi didn’t discard either approach. he accelerated the pace of infrastructure building, adding railways to the sectors that needed urgent attention. Additionally, he stepped up welfare expenditure, including direct welfare and subsidy payments to

targeted beneficiaries. hav-ing spent the first year of his administration extending the reach of banking servic-es to the very poor through Jan dhan accounts, he now used these accounts to cut out intermediaries and, in the process, reduce corrup-tion exponentially. the tax department made the hith-erto arduous task of filing tax returns so ridiculously simple and prone to instant

open essay

Finance minister nirmala sitharaman Presenting the unon budget in Parliament, February 1

Like Manmohan Singh in 1991, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman used an acknowledged crisis to push through changes that in more normal times would have invited fierce criticism from the remnants of India’s socialist bloc—a bloc that exists in all parties. Small wonder that the criticism of the Budget was limited to tired slogans about selling the family silver

15 february 202120

verification that the tension attached to the annual Budget was reduced.

Finally, right from the outset, the Modi Government made it clear that it disavowed sops and special incentives, except in exceptional circumstances. the Government focused instead on the ease of doing business, believing that less cumbersome regulations, the absence of cronyism and the creation of an appro-priate environment would promote an entrepreneurial culture. this in turn would have a cascading effect and end up promoting growth. Although this approach suffered a setback due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing disruption of normal life all over the country, the basic approach was not abandoned.

It was the special circumstances of post-pandemic recovery that created a measure of extra interest in this year’s Union Budget, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala sitharaman. throughout the lockdown period and after, there was a clamour among economists for the Government to abandon its policy of fiscal restraint and pour cash into the hands of people—an approach that they felt would kickstart a spluttering economy. they wanted sitharaman to emulate the British Chancellor of the exchequer rishi sunak and, in effect, pay partial salaries to prevent job losses.

the Modi Government, however, had other ideas. the

rs 20,000 crore stimulus package announced by sitharaman—in effect an Interim Budget—focused on three things.

First, in line with its principle of very targeted relief to the most vulnerable sections, it offered cash handouts through direct benefit transfers to women, migrant labour and farmers and undertook a massive campaign to ensure food security for all. For the vocal middle classes who expe-rienced the disruption severely, it offered some non-cash relief such as extension of tax deadlines and reduction in the tax deducted at source rates.

second, it used the pandemic to enhance capacity-building in the crucial health sector, building the necessary infrastruc-ture that has been so useful in rolling out the gigantic anti-Covid vaccine programme across the country with a measure of spectacular efficiency. Finally, it used the pandemic and the lockdown to foster the notion of self-reliance (not to be mistaken for self-sufficiency) in Atmanirbhar Bharat, a variant of the Make in India programme announced in 2014.

In effect, what the Modi Government successfully did was hold its nerve and not be bamboozled into short-term remedies that would make the long-term recovery less endur-

ing and sustainable. the political test of this approach was the Bihar Assembly election that was narrowly won, defeating a sustained populist challenge based on a reckless expansion of the government sector.

sitharaman’s Budget has, in effect, enlarged the approach spelt out last year to a larger sphere. the massive increase in ex-penditure on health was quite easily digested by public opinion, not least on account of the encouraging progress of the vaccine programme. the programme to upgrade India’s infrastructure, particularly in roads and railways, always had a ready audience since such investments have a big and visible multiplier effect. Finally, the sops to farmers in the form of enhanced procurement prices and relief to plantation workers was a response to the agita-tion in northern India which will help offset an impression that the Government wants to turn a way of life upside down.

however, public perceptions of the Budget are also dispro-portionately shaped by the middle classes. sitharaman won the hearts of this section by avoiding any extra tax burden and, indeed, making tax compliance that much easier for corporates. Particularly appealing to businesses were the provisions to decriminalise technical violations of the law. like Manmohan singh in 1991, sitharaman used an acknowledged crisis to push through changes that in more normal times would have invited

fierce criticism from the remnants of India’s socialist bloc—a bloc that exists in all parties. small wonder that the criticism of the Budget was limited to tired slogans about selling the family silver.

For Finance Minister sitharaman this Budget was a coming-of-age party. ever since she assumed charge, she had oper-ated under the shadow of her redoubtable predecessor who combined his nominal job in North Block with responsibilities as the Government’s foremost crisis manager. sitharaman isn’t likely to be another Arun Jaitley but in presenting a Budget that is based on the premise of optimism, she has boosted national sentiment enormously. the challenge of reversing degrowth with a double-digit expansion of the economy is undeniably daunting, even though the International Monetary Fund suggests India is on target. however, the mere fact that the Government’s budgetary calculations are based on a spectacu-lar recovery has enhanced India’s faith in itself and, by implica-tion, its faith in a finance minister who can think big. n

Swapan Dasgupta is an MP and India’s foremost conservative columnist. He is the author of Awakening Bharat Mata:

the Political Beliefs of the Indian right

open essay

Right from the outset, the Modi Government made it clear that it disavowed sops and special incentives, except in exceptional circumstances. The Government focused instead on the ease of doing business, believing that less cumbersome regulations, the absence of cronyism and the creation of an appropriate environment would promote an entrepreneurial culture

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T h e N e w D e a lResetting the Mindset

B y H a s e e B D r a B u and anil PaDmanaBHan

OpenOmics 2021

Union BUdget

Photo getty images

T h e N e w D e a lResetting the Mindset

B y H a s e e B D r a B u and anil PaDmanaBHan

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State

Anurag Thakur on their way to

Parliament to present the Union Budget,

February 1

15 february 202124

ast year, when nirmala sitharaman replaced the Budget in a briefcase—a colonial hangover imitating the ‘Gladstone Box’—with a local bahi khata, she started a tradition. In doing so, the minister’s family, especially her mother, made sure that the bright red

cloth pouch with the golden ashoka emblem was blessed by Lord Ganesh at the shree siddhivinayak Ganapati temple in Mumbai. It was a scramble but the finance minister’s mother managed the auspicious rendezvous.

this year, by carrying the tablet in the ‘sanctified’ cloth pouch she blended tradition with modernity, thereby sending a message. But that is not the only message in the Budget which has been feted for laying out a plan for safely navigating the country’s economy through the global destruction caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

the Union Budget for 2021-2022 combines the political sensibilities of new Delhi with the economic spirit of Mumbai to achieve a paradigm shift in economic policy—a scale last witnessed in 1991 when the nature of the economic policy regime was changed for good. to align these divergent, often conflicting thinking and expectations, is a bold move to say the very least. to marry an entrepreneurial inclination with a rentier mindset can be the recipe for a Molotov cocktail—especially with political opportunists waiting to strike. yet, the finance minister seems to have managed the tensions between these two opposing forces with the skill of an accomplished trapeze artist sans the usual safety nets.

LOpenOmics 2021

UNioN BUdget


PUreLy for Its decisive break from the past, the Union Budget for 2021-2022 will rank among the top five ‘disruptive’ Budgets and pitchforks sitharaman, most unexpectedly, into an elite league of finance

ministers. Combining with her boss, Prime Minister narendra Modi, sitharaman has carved out a special space for Modinom-ics in the budgetary history of post-independence India.

the last time a duo combined with such finesse was Prime Minister PV narasimha rao and finance Minister Manmohan singh in 1991. exactly why some analysts are referring to this as the ‘1991 moment’; because, once again, a Budget has ignored political rebuke and undertaken a bold and radical paradigm shift. to be sure, team sitharaman’s big-stakes gamble was based on the prime minister holding all the political aces. for now, it has paid off with the markets voting, scaling a record high. sitharaman’s third Budget (the economy did get third-time lucky!) will be remembered for long.

It already has a moniker: a-once-in-100-years Budget. this

Budget will not be remembered for the impressive rs 35 lakh crore expenditure that it promises. It will also not be remem-bered for the rs 5.5 lakh crore capital expenditure, almost 3 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or the coun-try’s national income, the highest in recent memory. It will not be remembered even for the massive hike in the expenditure on health; the outlay for ‘health and wellbeing’ was pegged at rs 2.23 lakh crore in 2021-2022—an increase of 137 per cent over rs 94,452 crore this year.

Instead, it will be part of Budget history for the change in mindset it boldly articulates; for trying to make ‘future Proof’ India; for aligning it with the aspirations being articulated by the youth, who account for two-thirds of the population. the unambiguous embrace of economic reforms—already visible in the resolve of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led national Democratic alliance (nDa) to ignore the pushback and stay the course on the new farm laws—is remarkable. overnight, the iterative approach of ‘reforms by stealth’—a hallmark of the process of economic change pursued for the last 40 years—has been ejected from the policy lexicon.

also, this Budget is the first policy document of the Union Government which virtually writes the obituary of the neh-ruvian legacy of a mixed economy and commanding heights

Purely for its decisive break from the Past, the budget 2021 will rank among the toP five ‘disruPtive’ budgets and Pitchforks nirmala sitharaman into an elite league of finance ministers. combining with Prime minister narendra modi, sitharaman has carved out a sPecial sPace for modinomics in the budgetary history of Post-indePendence india. the last time a duo combined with such finesse was Prime minister Pv narasimha rao and finance minister manmohan singh in 1991

THE 1991 MOMENT

15 february 202126

of the public sector so decisively. the nehruvian development model of the state’s all-pervasive primacy over individual en-terprise has been finally turned on its head. as audaciously as Modi did in politics, sitharaman has done it in economics.

Importantly, this effort should not be seen in isolation. yes, in terms of scale and intent it is unparalleled. But it is part of a larger transition being undertaken by India—partly by the sheer structural disruption caused by technology and partly owing to deliberate nudges towards a rules-based regime. this transition, which began a decade ago with the introduction of aadhaar, has seen a phenomenal acceleration in the last six years—an excellent example being JaM (Jan Dhan, aadhaar and Mobile) which has helped productionise direct benefits transfer; not only has it helped in targeting the beneficiary, but it has also reduced leakages, cumulatively estimated at rs 1,70,000 crore at the end of March 2020. the rejection of a discretion-based regime—like it happened with the decision to allocate spectrum and coal mines through auctions—is a non-negotiable for any economy looking to provide an equi-table opportunity, both for its citizens and foreign investors.

the unshackling of the economic regime proposed in the Budget blends with the emerging ecosystem in which the digi-tal economy is the base. the contours of the digital economy have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the last nine

months when new norms of lockdown and social distancing shifted most transactions to the online space. already fintechs are stepping into this space to expand the idea of inclusion to include access to working capital credit for MsMes.

this Budget is therefore an exercise in continuity of change.

PrIor to the Christmas break, sitharaman shared a teaser on her upcoming Union Budget. address-ing a summit hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry, she said, “send me your inputs so that we

can see a Budget which is a Budget like never before in a way. hundred years of India wouldn’t have seen a Budget being made post-pandemic like this.”

Most interpreted this to mean that the Union Budget to be presented on february 1st would be a game-changer. only natural for it to then have stirred expectations. yet, there was one other important subtext to the finance minister’s remarks: the return of the big-bang Budget.

for several reasons, over the last few years, the Union Budget

this budget is the first Policy document of the union government which writes the obituary of the nehruvian legacy of a mixed economy and commanding heights of the Public sector so decisively. this effort should not be seen in isolation. in terms of scale and intent it is unParalleled. but it is Part of a larger transition being undertaken by india—Partly by the sheer structural disruPtion caused by technology and Partly owing to deliberate nudges towards a rules-based regime

BOld REfORMs

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15 february 202128

has gradually lost its sheen; it was reduced to just one more date on the annual economic timeline of the country.

for one, the rapid growth of the private sector meant the role of the Union Government as the dominant economic entity gradually decreased. then the rollout of the Goods and services tax (Gst) happened. the power to undertake substantive in-direct tax changes—the granular detail of every Budget that left everyone, from the middle class to the stock markets, in a tizzy—in the Union Budget was transferred to a new federal entity, the Gst Council. and after the big tweak in corporate tax rates in late 2019, the excitement and anticipation about the Union Budget diminished that much more.

Consequently, the Union Budget’s focus was gradually evolv-ing into one about expenditure management. this is because every finance minister had little left over—about a quarter of the total expenditure outlay—for discretionary spending. and that was because the rest of it was mostly pre-empted by annual wages, interest payments on outstanding debt and subsidies.

But then Covid-19 struck. all bets were off. almost everyone was baying for a course correction and a massive economic stimulus to kick-start an economy which had ground to a halt.

throughout last year, the finance minister ignored unso-licited advice and calibrated her spending. Despite contracting revenues, the Government did not revisit its expenditure com-

mitments presented in the 2020-2021 Budget—presented just prior to the pandemic. It did announce three stimulus packages staggered over six months. the bulk of the spending, especially in the initial months, was directed towards saving lives—by providing income and food in the hands of the people. It was only when the economy began to exhibit some signs of coming back to life as the spread of the pandemic peaked that livelihood became a policy focus. net-net, the Union Government spent far beyond its means—exactly why the fiscal deficit witnessed a record slippage to 9.5 per cent of GDP in the current fiscal year.

however, the finance minister had imbibed a very impor-tant lesson in this period, which has been incorporated in the ‘Big Bang Budget’ she unveiled on february 1st. It pivoted public policy focus away from leaving money in the hands of consumers and companies to funding big-ticket infrastructure projects with built-in multipliers.

sitharaman has redefined the role of government and its relationship with the economy in terms of interventions. this is big government with a difference: the commanding heights will now be occupied by the private sector. Indeed, in some ways this Budget resonates with the Bombay Plan of 1944 in which the top industrialists of that time had suggested that government must invest to enable the nascent private sector to grow. this Budget seeks to do the same for a well-established

sitharaman has redefined the role of government and its relationshiP with the economy in terms of interventions. this is big government with a difference: the commanding heights will now be occuPied by the Private sector. this budget resonates with the bombay Plan of 1944 in which toP industrialists had suggested government must invest to enable the nascent Private sector to grow. this budget seeks to do the same for a well-established Private sector currently in a bind

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private sector which is currently in a bind because of the pan-demic. the idea underlying this Budget is the same: setting the stage for the private sector to perform.

this is very different from the big reforms moment in 1991. yes, that too was born of a crisis; though unlike now that was caused by a mismanagement of the domestic economy. further, in 1991, it was the same Congress party, egged on by an unprec-edented economic crisis, with India at the risk of defaulting on its global dues, which ended the licence raj—the pernicious practice of capping production through the issue of licences. In fact, the then Congress manifesto had committed to iron out the kinks in licence raj and not junk it. Undoubtedly, the nudge and a wink by the International Monetary fund (IMf), which was providing a backstop to prevent a sovereign default, influenced the new policy contours.

“when it came to the Congress party, rao was able to defend reforms with trickery—using Jawaharlal nehru as a shield and Manmohan (singh) as a mask,” wrote Vinay sitapati in his seminal book Half-Lion: How PV Narasimha Rao Transformed India, by far the most authoritative tome on the 1991 phase of economic reforms.

thirty years later, yet another crisis served up a fresh op-portunity to hit the reset. But with a difference. Unlike earlier, this crisis was on account of the Covid-19 pandemic which

had ravaged every economy in the world. further, at the helm was BJP, the new political pole, which enjoyed a comfortable majority in Parliament. It had no legacy or baggage. If any-thing, it drew from the previous nDa regime led by atal Bihari Vajpayee which, among other things, had hit the accelerator on disinvestment—demonstrating political courage to go ahead with the outright sale of some units. no regime thereafter dared to even come close.

that was till Budget 2021-2022.

The UnIon BUDGet has no doubt, in the aftermath of the pandemic, reclaimed its primacy. But primarily as a facilitator. even though the Centre has bumped up its own capital expenditure, its composition is

such that it catalyses capital formation in the private sector. the purpose of the increased capital allocations is more to gen-erate outcomes rather than output, reflecting a major shift in the mindset of the Government. the outcomes that are not

the union budget has no doubt, in the aftermath of the Pandemic, reclaimed its Primacy. but Primarily as a facilitator. even though the centre has bumPed uP its own caPital exPenditure, its comPosition is such that it catalyses caPital formation in the Private sector. the PurPose of the increased caPital allocations is more to generate outcomes rather than outPut, reflecting a major shift in the mindset of the government

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budgeted but factored in as expected, is the private investment.It has ordained a fundamental ideological reset wherein the

Union Government no longer sees itself as the investor of the last resort and first call. not only is there a clear focus on stra-tegic investing but also the political will in monetising assets that have been created over the last 70 years to free up scarce capital. this is the real essence of the latest Budget offering.

this is the key difference between a Budget for an open market economy and that for a liberalised regulated econo-my. Ideologically, this is an out-and-out open economy Budget. not surprisingly, in its analytical moorings, even though it is a pure pump priming Budget, it is more schumpeterian than Keynesian. Unlike John Maynard Keynes (whose ideas fundamentally transformed macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments) who advocated plain government intervention to prop up the economy and failed businesses of all types, Joseph schumpeter (the austrian political economist who popularised the term ‘creative destruction’) believed that the economy will be driven by the animal spirits of entrepreneurs—inspiring a culture of perform and perish—which is what the Government is hoping will be unleashed such that India Inc shakes out of its stupor and kickstarts the investment cycle.

The other strUCtUraL change undertaken by the finance minister is the exorcising of the ghost of the fiscal dharma. It has been in the making for 40 years and till this Budget was an untouchable. the

idea was first introduced when India negotiated a structural adjustment loan with the IMf in 1980 to bail it out of an ex-ternal sector crisis. India exited the programme in 1982 and managed to evade implementing the reforms it had committed itself to for availing the loan. But it hung on to the idea of fiscal conservatism—nothing wrong in conforming to the mantra of spend within your means.

In fact, in the 1980s, the Government set up a committee un-der the chairmanship of Bimal Jalan to draw up a blueprint for a ‘Long term fiscal Policy’. elements of this began to be progres-sively incorporated into the Budget arithmetic. It gained fresh impetus after the largesse of the 1980s, wherein the Government borrowed abroad to fund the Budget deficit, ended badly and landed India in an external debt crisis. soon, the fiscal deficit

the other structural change undertaken by the finance minister is the exorcising of the ghost of the fiscal dharma. it has been

in the making for 40 years and till this budget was an untouchable. sitharaman has, desPite the threat of a rebuke from the international rating agencies, decided to ditch the Practice. instead, she has given Primacy to Public exPenditure Policy over fiscal Policy

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became the metric to measure a Budget’s success or failure.thereafter, every finance minister used it as a given; got into

the habit of fixing an annual target and measuring their suc-cess in Budget management by sticking as close as possible to this number. this became both the means and the end. It was almost impossible to achieve these targets, encouraging finance ministers to take items off the balance sheet and, in some instances, just cook the books. on paper, governments were spending within their means, but in practice, they were not. the outcome has been a massive debt overhang. worse, finance ministers obsessing with the balancing of books often took their eyes off the quality of spending—using the borrow-ings to fund wages and rising debt service obligations instead of capital expenditure to create assets. this year, for instance, the finance minister has had to budget nearly rs 80,000 crore towards debt service; a sum which is sufficient to fund the rural employment guarantee scheme outlay in a normal year.

sitharaman has, despite the threat of a rebuke from the in-ternational rating agencies which still use the fiscal deficit as a primary metric in their risk assessment of a country, decided to ditch this practice. Instead, she has given primacy to public expenditure policy over fiscal policy. By going against the prec-edent, tradition and wisdom of meeting or reducing the fiscal

deficit number, the ghost of fiscal deficit has been exorcised; at least till 2026. from a high of 9.5 per cent of GDP in 2020-2021 it is estimated to be 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2025-2026.

normally, a high level of fiscal deficit endangers the macro-economic stability when it is disproportionately used to finance current and not capital spending as it ‘crowds out’ private in-vestment and puts upward pressure on interest rates. a closer look at the deficit numbers reveals that the finance minister has done better in this fiscally profligate Budget than in the ‘fiscally prudent’ Budget last year when 80 per cent of the fiscal deficit was used to finance the revenue deficit; a longstanding fiscal concern. as against this, in the current Budget, the share of borrowings going to finance capital expenditure has increased from 20 to 25 per cent; certainly still very low, but better than in previous years—at the very least, a new beginning.

the idea, it seems, has been to restore and recalibrate the ex-penditure balance that has got skewed since 2010. the finance minister has, at the appropriate time, pulled back from a trans-fer payment, revenue expenditure-led Budget to a capacity-creating, capital expenditure-led Budget.

It is in this framework that the level and, more importantly, the structure and composition of public expenditure need to be analysed. having secured a high level of spending, the real

the government is walking its talk and saying it is no longer in the business of running enterPrises that can be undertaken by the Private sector. a remarkable reset of the 60-year notion of the Public sector as the commanding heights of the economy. indeed, a remarkable makeover. the first time Probably an official document has so oPenly turned uP in the corner of indian business. Presumably, bjP-ruled states will dePloy the same temPlate and Provide Proof of concePt for this reform

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challenge will be to make it consistent with macroeconomic stability. this has been attempted by making the public ex-penditure policy part of a systemic reform package aimed at raising the sustainable growth rate by promoting domestic saving and productive investment.

In the budgetary arithmetic, this means a reduction in rev-enue deficit as a percentage of the fiscal deficit, and allowing for an increase in the proportion of capital expenditure to overall fiscal deficit. even if the fiscal deficit is a bit higher, its quality will be much better for both growth as well as infla-tion. exactly the sentiment influencing the stock markets; they are clearly making a distinction in the quality of spend-ing—alternatively, in the normal course of things, they would have baulked at the prospect of a government going in for such a big borrowing.

the new structure of public expenditure, biased as it is in favour of infrastructure, rightly recognises the severity and seriousness of supply-side constraints that are holding back growth and in some instances contributing to price pressures.

a focus on public expenditure policy will go a long way in addressing another structural constraint: the decline in the sav-ings and investment rate. If these are restored through changes in public expenditure policy, growth will revive on its own.

The reJIG of the key principles underlying the Budget arithmetic has been accompanied by one of the most audacious moves with respect to the future role of the public sector. after testing waters with the

move to offload air India, the Union Government is proposing to go the full distance. In the Budget, the finance minister made clear that the presence of the public sector will be restricted to a few strategic sectors—identified as: atomic energy, space and Defence; transport and telecommunications; Power, Petroleum, Coal and other Minerals; and Banking, Insurance and financial services.

the policy statement annexed to the finance minister’s speech adds, and very bluntly at that: ‘In non-strategic sectors, CPses will be privatised, otherwise shall be closed.’

explaining the logic of the new policy, the statement says: ‘[the idea is] Minimising presence of Central Government

the outcome of all these building blocks coming together is growth. the exPenditure balance that had got skewed since 2010 has been Pulled back from a transfer Payment, revenue exPenditure-led budget

to a caPacity-creating, caPital exPenditure-led budget. aPart from securing a level of sPending consistent with macroeconomic stability, the comPosition will engender a sustainable growth rate by Promoting domestic savings and Productive investment

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Public sector enterprises including financial institutions and creating new investment space for private sector.’

ergo, the Government is walking its talk and saying it is no longer in the business of running enterprises that can be undertaken by the private sector. It is the explicit political acceptance of what was known to academicians and policy-makers for long — that public sector investment/expenditure provides less efficient outcomes compared to the private sector. a remarkable reset of the 60-year notion of the public sector as the commanding heights of the economy. Indeed, a remarkable makeover. the first time probably an official document has so openly turned up in the corner of Indian business. Presumably, BJP-ruled states will deploy the same template and provide proof of concept for this reform to be made universal.

alongside, the finance minister has given fresh wind to an ex-isting proposal to monetise public infrastructure. the resources thus freed are to be used as a key financing option for new in-frastructure construction. “a ‘national Monetization Pipeline’ of potential brownfield infrastructure assets will be launched. an asset monetisation dashboard will also be created for track-ing the progress and to provide visibility to investors,” she said.

the proposal is to link the proceeds from this monetisa-tion of assets to the projects awaiting funding in the national

Infrastructure Pipeline (nIP), the body created in 2019. the nIP launched with 6,835 projects has now expanded its pipeline to 7,400 projects. about 217 projects worth rs 1.10 lakh crore have been completed.

this prioritised infrastructure spending on roads, afford-able housing, railways, power, etcetera, will address various infrastructure bottlenecks, boost the core sectors, and create a multiplier effect on the economy. the associated job creation would eventually translate into higher consumption as well.

The oUtCoMe of all these building blocks coming together is growth. In this year’s Budget, the expen-diture balance that had got skewed since 2010 has been pulled back from a transfer payment, revenue

expenditure-led Budget to a capacity-creating, capital expen-diture-led Budget. In this, sitharaman has also tweaked the

GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH

the budget has exPlicitly accePted that unmanaged health risks have the Potential to cause unPrecedented economic disruPtion. it has also tacitly acknowledged that

the current level of sPending on healthcare, a little over 1 Per cent of gdP, is inadequate. the underlying idea is very simPle: Prevention is better than cure. so, by ensuring basic hygiene and drinking water, a range of illnesses can be contained. it is not enough. but it is a beginning as well as a signal of a mindset reset

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expenditure strategy of her mentor and predecessor arun Jaitley. apart from securing a level of spending consistent with

macroeconomic stability, the composition will engender a sustainable growth rate by promoting domestic savings and productive investment.

the new structure of public expenditure has recognised the severity and seriousness of supply-side constraints that are holding back growth. so even with a lower level in real terms, the structure and composition of the budgetary expenditure will generate growth.

Be it through encouraging infrastructure debt funds done earlier or credit enhancement mechanism for infrastructure financing institutions or the setting up of a new Development finance Institution (DfI) with more suitable maturity and quality of funds, it will go a long way in not only propelling autonomous investment demand through a change in the composition of public expenditure but also providing liquid-ity for financing infrastructure and thereby reducing the ca-pacity constraints.

while the economy is still in a comatose consumption

mode because of the pandemic, the autonomous investment demand will, over the next three years, see a restoration of the earlier level of savings. this is important from the point of view of keeping the current account deficit in check and insulating the external account and, in turn, will keep the currency risk at bay.

I n the rUn-UP to this year’s Budget, one issue was ap-parent. the health sector desperately needed a reset. seven decades of neglect of public policy has left both lives and livelihood at risk. the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated

that geography is no defence against the growing trend of vector-borne diseases. worse, it is neither the first nor is it go-ing to be the last.

if the last one year is any indication, the country’s central bank is very likely to steP uP to the Plate. in the aftermath of the covid-induced economic mayhem, the rbi aligned its vision with that of the finance ministry to focus on growth. the rbi ensured amPle suPPly of liquidity to ensure, in turn, that the additional borrowing undertaken by the union government to fund the stimulus did not crowd out Private sector demand or disruPt the bond market. this newfound bonhomie is unlikely to be revisited soon

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2 aPrIL 201838

UDGets of GoVernMents, the world over, are an exercise in politi-cal economy, not arithmetic. It is as much about voters and supporters as it is about investors and taxpayers. the context, political as well as eco-nomic, in which the budget is being presented, must inform the content of the budget.

It is generally not known but more time and effort is spent on navigating the budget through the risk-averse and largely status quoist bureaucratic system. My personal experience has taught me that even greater negotiating skills are required to on-board party colleagues and build a consensus especially on the budget within a coalition government.

nirmala sitharaman’s Budget, high on eQ, seems to have been helped in conception, design and style by a few things that stand out in all good budgets.

SAY IT AS IT ISthe first step is to ensure that the basic ingredients, the num-bers in the budget, are not adulterated. as Chef Jean-Pierre famously said, if you put pure ingredients, you will get a parfait dish even if you are a bad chef.

By recognising the reality and reporting it when the arch lights were on, the finance minister has restored the integrity of the Budget numbers. this is even more creditable because some of the official numbers generated by this Government—the unemployment census, the GDP esti-mates—would have failed the smell test. PC Mahalanobis, the father of the official statistics of India, would have definitely taken umbrage.

the fiscal deficit figure at 10.8 per cent, for instance, is the most accurate figure in a long, long time. the Budget became a fudget in the 1990s when the International Monetary fund (IMf) had put a fiscal deficit number as a conditionality. Being stuck with hav-ing to meet that given number, a lot of creativity was expended on fudging the number.

recall how the surplus in the oil

pool account was transferred to the Consolidated fund of India, known as the Geethakrishnan effect (KP Geethakrish-nan was the then finance secretary), to show a lower fiscal deficit number. the IMf conditionality got over because the Government of India found it easier and simpler to terminate the loan agreement than find news of fudging!

or the time when the original public finance guru, raja Chelliah, advisor to the finance minister, came up with a simple solution to reduce the fiscal deficit without raising the revenue or cutting the expenditures. he suggested hik-ing the dividend from the reserve Bank of India (rBI) from rs 150 crore to rs 1,500 crore! the rBI boss, like most Budget analysts, discovered the sleight of hand a day later after read-ing the fine print.

CUT NOT YOUR COAT ACCORDING TO YOUR CLOTH a sovereign to be a sovereign, is better off buying the cloth according to the coat it needs. as the Polish economist, Michał Kalecki, said about capitalists, governments earn what they spend. Unlike individuals and households who spend what they earn.

Budgets should not be made with revenue receipts as the determining policy variable. expenditure should be the focus and fulcrum of the budget. Based on a firm understanding

of the economic situation, a policy deci-sion should be taken by the finance min-ister about how much expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, must be made. that done, the resources team should be put to work to finance this level of expendi-ture. It is this feature that differentiates a sovereign’s budget from a home budget.

Putting expenditure at the core of the contraction was the most critical input given by Bimal Jalan, chairman of the economic advisory Council to the Prime Minister (eaC-PM), to then finance Minister Manmohan singh. I recall this from my days in the eaC. from the point of view of budgetary arithmetic, this is what made the Budget for 1991-1992 a game-changer in fiscal policy terms.

exactly three decades later, that is exactly how team sitharaman has con-

ON BREWING A BUDGETHASEEB DRABU taPs his own exPeriences as a technocrat Politician and minister to share a Personalised take on making a budget

B

the state budget of jammu and kashmir was a fiscal wreck. I discovered it was all because of one sector: power. The gap between expenditure on power purchase and power receipts, the ‘financial power deficit’, was more than the fiscal deficit! So, it made sense to keep power out of the main budget

38

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sitharaman’s Budget has explicitly accepted that unman-aged health risks have the potential to cause unprecedented economic disruption. It has also tacitly acknowledged that the current level of spending on healthcare, a little over 1 per cent of GDP, is inadequate.

“taking a holistic approach to health, we focus on strengthening three areas: Preventive, Curative, and wellbe-ing,” sitharaman said.

Besides developing capacities in primary, secondary and tertiary care health systems—funded by a new programme with a budget of rs 64,180 crore to be spent over six years—the strategy commits to providing drinking water universally, a holistic plan to rewire urban India under an Urban swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 with a total financial allocation of rs 1.41 lakh crore to be spent over the next five years.

Including the cost of funding the Covid-19 vaccine pro-gramme with an initial budget of rs 35,000 crore, the total outlay under ‘health and wellbeing’ has been bumped up to a staggering rs 2.23 lakh crore—compared to rs 94,452 crore in 2020-2021.

the underlying idea is very simple: prevention is better than cure. so, by ensuring basic hygiene and drinking water, a range of illnesses like diarrhoea, responsible for significant fatalities, can be contained.

yes, even now it is not enough to fund the health needs of India. But it is a beginning as well as a signal of a mindset reset in the approach to healthcare. since health is a state subject, the collective success of this programme depends on a coordinated effort. easier said than done, especially given that states are even more resource-strapped than the Union Government.

even though this Budget is decisively pro-business, it is also a social Budget that proposes to use market instrumen-talities to reset the economy. Implemented together, it should trigger a recovery; the former will address the demand-side issues while the latter will ease the supply-side constraints. It is consistent with the ideology of this Government which pre-fers empowerment over entitlement—the idea that people are happier if they are taught how to fish rather than simply being handed the fish.

W Ith sUCh an expansionary fiscal policy, attention will inevitably shift from raisina hill in new Delhi to Mint street in Mumbai. whether or not the economy will revive,

will now depend on how the reserve Bank of India (rBI), India Inc and the banking sector respond to the challenge.

the planned revival and recovery of the economy will require a complete coordination between the fiscal

OVER TO RBI

ON BREWING A BUDGETHASEEB DRABU taPs his own exPeriences as a technocrat Politician and minister to share a Personalised take on making a budget

structed their Budget. of course, the decision to do so has been driven by the crying need for a fiscal stimulus which has at best been inadequate so far. having done that, al-locate according to your need.

RESTORE THE BALANCE, BOLDLY having made the level of expenditure the soul of the bud-get, life gets breathed into it by allocating it to sectors that are chocking growth.

the state budget of the then Jammu and Kashmir was always perceived as a fiscal wreck; something beyond redemption. after I took over as finance minister and conducted a detailed examination of the budget maths, I discovered it was all because of one sector: power. the gap between the expenditure on power purchase and power receipts, the ‘financial power deficit’, was more than the fiscal deficit! so, instead of trying to alter the entire fis-cal set-up, it made sense to keep power out of the main budget and provide for it separately. that is why I set a precedent and presented the power budget, in addition to the general budget, in the state assembly.

the focus on capital expenditure in the Union Budget was long overdue. Last year, just as an example, the Govern-ment spent rs 15 on overheads to execute re 1 of capital ex-penditure. this is a little noticed allocative anomaly which has huge macroeconomic implications. the only way to improve this is to cut the revenue expenditure which is not easy to do with 80 per cent of it pre-empted as salaries, in-terest payments. so the only solution is to improve capital expenditure. and back it with a slew of policy initiatives. the only Budget that I recall having done this better than the current one is the Budget of 1996 which allocated re-sources to the housing sector and complemented it with a slew of market-making policy initiatives.

to deliver on the ground, this expansionary Budget needs to be executed in partnership with the state govern-ments. and it is this that could well be the achilles heel of the Budget. the only discordant note in an otherwise good Budget is the shrinking role of state governments in policy matters. as it is, the states are nothing more than expenditure disbursing institutions. the policy and pow-ers to design have increasingly been centralised, deny-ing states any skin in the game. the non-participation of states could well dampen the success if not the spirit of this Budget.

that would be a tragedy. n

15 february 202140

policymakers and the mandarins of monetary policy. there cannot be an rBI prescription for reviving growth

that is at variance with the finance ministry policy for it. the same is true for inflation. the perspective of the central bank and that of the finance ministry, to the extent that these are at variance, only change the nuances and the emphasis of the policy.

to close the loop, the new public expenditure policy has to be complemented by fiscal and monetary policies to provide greater liquidity to the infrastructure sector that has become a binding constraint for growth. Maybe the current team can take a leaf out of the 1991 episode. In July of 1991, when the ‘hop, skip and jump’ strategy of devaluation was implemented, the political class got cold feet after the hop—the first round

of devaluation—and an effort was made to stall the second round of devaluation. It was pulled off because Manmohan singh and rBI’s then deputy governor, C rangarajan, colluded in making the latter go incommunicado till the second round of devaluation was carried out. such behind-the-scenes mo-ments will crop up even now but they will have to be handled with conviction and courage.

If the last one year is any indication, the country’s central bank is very likely to step up to the plate. In the aftermath of the Covid-induced economic mayhem, the rBI aligned its vision with that of the finance ministry to focus on growth. through-out most of last year, the rBI ensured ample supply of liquidity to ensure, in turn, that the additional borrowing undertaken by the Union Government to fund the stimulus did not crowd

the imPact of sitharaman’s budget will reverberate across the economy; the euPhoria has already seized the markets with the sensex scaling mt 50k. at the same time, it has given bjP ownershiP of a distinct economic ideology. till this budget, its economic Policy was similar to that of congress in the 1990s

while it is a fact that the budget is not the Panacea for all of the country’s economic challenges, it is also true that the finance minister missed a trick. the most critical deficit facing the indian economy—the natural resource deficit—is consPicuous by its absence

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out private sector demand or disrupt the bond market. this newfound bonhomie is unlikely to be revisited soon.

W hILe It Is a fact that the Budget is not the panacea for all of the country’s economic challenges, it is also true that the finance min-ister missed a trick. the most critical deficit

facing the Indian economy—the natural resource deficit—is conspicuous by its absence.

Besides importing two-thirds of its oil requirement, India is slated to overtake China as the world’s largest coal importer over the next decade, even though China’s coal consumption is over six times India’s. even in the case of iron ore, India has slipped from being the third-largest iron ore exporter globally and is now at risk of becoming a net importer soon.

It is also important to realise that this natural resource defi-cit is the primary source of the macroeconomic vulnerabilities the country is facing.

first, the main driver of the current account deficit on the bal-ance of payments has been oil and gold imports. second, a large element of India’s persistently high inflation has been driven by energy and commodity prices. third, the fiscal deficit has bloated over the years primarily because of energy subsidies overshoot-ing conservatively budgeted projections. thus, there is clearly a need for an innovative structure that can appropriately channel

India’s financial savings to physical assets and can use the same to mitigate the macroeconomic issues facing the country.

Like the innovative proposal in monetising public in-frastructure assets, the Government could have proposed a natural resource investment trust. such a trust would own a portfolio of natural resource assets across the world, focusing on those of critical importance to India.

a well designed natural resource investment trust would not only help address India’s natural resource deficit but also provide a channel for domestic Indian savings into physical as-sets, address the balance of payments challenge in a structural fashion and also provide Indians with a naturally inflation-hedged investment avenue.

to sum up, the impact of sitharaman’s Budget will reverber-ate across the economy; the euphoria has already seized the markets with the sensex scaling Mt 50K. at the same time, it has given BJP ownership of a distinct economic ideology. till the presentation of this Budget, barring the trimmings and wrapping, BJP’s economic policy was similar to that designed by Congress in the 1990s. the highlight of this differentiation being the emphasis on the internal institutional reforms, as distinct from external liberalisation.

as the late arun Jaitley, also the mentor of sitharaman, once pointed out, proof of concept is key to winning public confi-dence—citing public services like electricity as an example, he had said that one can only charge the cost price for it after one delivers reliable and 24x7 power. what the Modi regime has done in the last six years by targeting leakages is restore primacy and faith in the public delivery system. sitharaman’s Budget takes it to another level. n

Haseeb Drabu is an economist and the former finance minister of Jammu and Kashmir

Anil Padmanabhan is a Delhi-based journalist who writes on the intersection of politics and economics in his weekly column ‘Capital Calculus’

THE OMIssION

MAKING INDIA FUTUREPROOFWhat Budget 2021 offers from the top to the Bottom of the socio-economic pyramid

OpenOmics 2021

UNioN BUdget

Source: Ernst and Young I l lustration by saurabh singh

www.openthemagazine.com 43

Rich

Middle class

New Middle class

New PooR

PooR

Double taxation removed for nRis

No introduction of wealth tax and cess despite fiscal needs

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‘One nation One Ration card’ to help migrants access pDs at their place of work

portal to collect relevant information on gig, building and construction workers. Will aid in providing health, housing, skill, insurance, credit and food benefits to migrant workers

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extension of interest deduction for affordable housing

Time-bound access to bank deposits to the extent of deposit insurance cover

Late deposit of employee’s contribution to epF by employer will not be allowed as deduction by (expense to) employer

Vehicle scrappage policy

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Boost to affordable rental housing construction for migrant workers

national Apprenticeship scheme for skill development

minimum wages will apply to all categories of workers. They will all be covered by employees state insurance corporation

incorporation of one-person companies made easier with no need for start-up capital

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pm Atmanirbhar swasth Bharat Yojana launched to develop primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare systems

supplementary nutrition programme revamped as mission poshan 2.0 to strengthen nutritional content, delivery and outreach in 112 aspirational districts

Jal Jeevan mission (Urban) for universal water supply in all 4,378 urban local bodies in 5 years

Ujjwala scheme to supply cooking gas extended to cover 1 crore more beneficiaries

Rs 1,000 crore for welfare of tea workers in Assam and West Bengal

Target of establishing 750 eklavya model residential schools in tribal areas

post matric scholarship scheme for welfare of scheduled castes

stand-Up india loans made attractive for scheduled castes, scheduled Tribes and women

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I l lustration by Saurabh Singh

OpenOmics 2021IntervIew

PEOPLE WANT THEIR GOVERNMENT TO ENSURE OPPORTUNITIES. THEY DON’T WANT TO CONSTANTLY LOOK TO IT FOR DOLES

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F i na nce M i n is t er n i r M a l a si t h a r a M a n

Photo getty images

This year’s Budget was billed as a ‘never before event’ meant to address an unprecedented contraction in the economy engendered by the Covid-19 pandemic. To ensure that her Budget is a big-bang force multiplier on jobs and asset creation, the finance minister buried fiscal deficit constraints. Speaking to Open, she asserts that it is time to abandon the socialist baggage and mark the directional change an aspirational India wants. Her mantra is to end the ambiguity in economic policymaking and focus on getting government out of non-strategic areas

This is a big-bang exercise that has restored the primacy of the Union Budget in the country’s micro-economic framework. The Government is going to be the biggest spender and force multiplier. Is this going to be the new pattern? The Budget had to show that the Government is not averse to spending or to giving the neces-sary stimulus to the economy and that it has listened carefully to so many people who have given their counsel. This spend, for providing a stimulus to the economy, is also a responsible spend—responsible both in choosing the time, and responsible in targeted expenditure. By this, we aim to achieve two things. First, the force mul-tiplier that infrastructure brings with it—some speculated it is 1:1.25 and some others say that it’s 1:2. For every rupee spent, this is the kind of multiplier effect it would bring and, therefore, infrastructure is the preferred route. It will also have an immediate bearing on people getting jobs, work for the skilled and the semi-skilled and real opportunities for the unskilled. And second, we also realise that the quality of spending can be monitored well when you do this. It’s no secret that there’s a resource constraint. It’s no secret that the funding will have to come through bor-rowings that the Government is going to do. Dis-investment is going to give me non-tax revenue,

but that will take a few months from now

By PR Ramesh

15 february 202146

to start trickling in. So, qualitative spending, creation of assets and providing jobs immediately will—by the assertions of economists and even critics of the Government—for sure, put India in a virtuous cycle. That’s why this Budget has chosen this path. I cannot say whether this will be the new pattern, but that will depend on how the economy picks up and how my revenue generation improves. With this thought in my mind that a glide path will have to be kept for fiscal prudence.

For the first time, you have buried the ghost of fiscal deficit constraints and shifted focus to public expendi-ture. Earlier, public expenditure was a residual of fiscal policy and government had little freedom to spend. How do you explain this change?I have given myself space to be able to do this by stretching the deficit. The number that I have shown will give me that space. I have chosen to spend it on capital expenditure. We thought of this as an opportunity for the Government to state clearly what it stands for. Equally, to remove the socialist baggage and mark the directional change which aspirational India is looking for. The youth, who constitute two-thirds of our population, firmly believe that there are many things that government has no busi-ness being in and that it should not squander away taxpayers’

money on enterprises that can be handled successfully by private players. Aspirational youth is restless because of the ambiguity in the economic policies practised in the country. We wanted to address that ambiguity. We believe that policymaking has to get rid of that ambiguity and say “no” to government presence in non-essential areas. That’s one thing that I want to underline about this Budget.

The big shift that you signalled is the exit of the public sector from non-strategic areas. It is economically powerful but could be politically troublesome. How do

you propose to manage the fallout?The youth of this country are looking for that narrative from the Government. Are you conscious of a vibrant India, are you con-scious of an entrepreneurially successful India and, therefore, are you going to empower them or are you going to persist with a smokescreen that says “I’m the authorising or licensing agent and without me giving you that permission, you cannot do any legitimate entrepreneurial activity”? That smokescreen had to be got rid of. And that’s what we have done.

The big takeaways suggest a ‘mindset reset’ for the country. Do you think India is ready for it?It is a reset certainly. It is a reset where government will have to speak the people’s language. People want their efficiency rewarded. People want their skills to be upgraded and given due recognition. People want an honest profit to be appreci-ated. People want duties with responsibilities. People don’t want patronage. People want government to ensure oppor-tunities and don’t want to constantly look to it for doles. So, it’s an explicitly stated agenda rather than a couched agenda. How else would you do it? If a mandated government doesn’t state it, there will always be the doubt that discretion would come into play. It can come into play by favouring some and

harassing some others. So how much ever you talk about cleaning the sys-tem, that would be only at the edges rather than getting into the core. The ordinary taxpayer of this country longs for that day when every rupee s/he paid would be counted. When s/he sees that the money, which s/he is honestly pay-ing as tax, is going down a black hole, there is bound to be revulsion. Espe-cially when s/he sees that the money is being sunk into companies on their deathbed, it is natural for her/him to be disgruntled about honestly paying taxes. The taxpayer may not expect to be rewarded directly, but s/he expects government to be responsible in spend-ing that tax money. There are still some areas where the public sector has a role to play. But to deny private participa-

tion in every sector is convoluted thinking. The mindset was always there. The mindset wanted the country to be unfettered. It was the political class which was not recognising it.The Jana Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) believed, while keeping in mind that the nation had to be strong and self-re-liant, that individual enterprise should not be scuttled. That profit can never be a bad word. But look at Congress. Without batting an eyelid, they are the ones who have switched completely from the socialistic agenda to claiming credit for opening up the economy.


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Qualitative spending, creation of assets and providing jobs immediately will put india in a virtuous cycle. that’s why the Budget has chosen this path. i cannot say whether this will be the new pattern, but that will depend on how the economy picks up


How much did that get discussed in any one of the AICC sessions? How many vot-ed for it and who were against the policies adopted by its governments? Look at the radical shift they can make—claiming at one time that they believe in nation-alisation and at another time that they are the most economically progressive. That is the landscape of acute contradic-tions in which Congress finds comfort. We, on the other hand, have been say-ing from the days of the Jana Sangh that India’s strength lies in the capabilities of its entrepreneurs but they have been fet-tered constantly by the licence quota raj. Is it not time now to ensure that the next generation does not suffer in such situa-tions? That’s why we chose to clear the ambiguity on policymaking.

The popular mood may have been for unleashing the animal spirits, but that was not being reflected in the policy response of previous govern-ments. There was a gap—the public was ahead but fear was holding the political class back.Yes, it was important to address this mismatch. Otherwise, the youth of this country—and I repeat, two-thirds of the Indian population—is not going to like it if government looks the other way even as aspirations are voiced by people. They want the opportunity to prove their worth. That’s why I quoted the example of the cricket victory in the Budget. The captain was not there. The team did not lose spirit nor distrust its captain but performed as a team with an insuppressible thirst to win. Two-thirds of India are waiting to perform. That’s the connect I wanted to bring to this Budget. Allow them to enter every sector, every area. You have no right to sit on non-performing assets (NPAs). We have to be accountable to the people.

Some experts say that it’s one of the five most disruptive Budgets in independent India. How do you see the movement forward?Let me tell you what I have done in the Budget. Everyone wants transparency everywhere. Government, therefore, should keep its books transparent. And how many governments controlled by different parties genuinely attempted to clean up the books? Yes, I made the best of the pandemic. I used this opportunity to clean up the books. And that’s why you find the funding for the Food Corporation of India (FCI) is not kept out of the balance sheet. We brought it on to the statement. The National Social Se-curity Fund (NSSF)—which is actually a savings programme—

should earn the maximum for people who are investing in it. We borrow from it. I am not saying that tomorrow that kind of borrowing may not happen. That could happen. But the Govern-ment has clearly acknowledged where an item should actually be and where an item should not be. There is no stealth. I would be the last person to pour taxpayers’ money into economic activ-ity that makes no sense for government to be in.

Now take the running of airlines. Every government agreed that it was no longer possible to run Air India. No one would disagree. But in order to keep it alive, I am pouring more taxpayer money into it. I should do it if there is an emergency, one-time need. Now it has become an annual ritual. Is it going to be better-run by me as it stays now? Probably not. Every government tried to make Air India run well. I am not accusing anyone. But can I do it now? Can any government do it now? Therefore, I think putting taxpayers’ money into something that doesn’t show any prospect of running successfully is wrong. At the end of the day, I am responsible for ensuring that every rupee of taxpayer money is not misused or used irresponsibly.

In my childhood, I had this curiosity about the bills that shopkeepers would give after purchases. At the bottom of the

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the ordinary taxpayer longs for that day when every rupee he paid would be counted. When he sees that the money is going down a black hole, there is bound to be revulsion. the taxpayer may not expect to be rewarded directly, but he expects the government to be responsible in spending tax money

two-thirds of india—the youth—are waiting to perform. that’s the connect i wanted to bring to this Budget. allow them to enter every sector, every area. You have no right to sit on non-performing assets. We have to be accountable to the people

15 february 202148

bill there used to be ‘EOE’ written. For a very long time, I did not know what it meant. I checked and found that it meant ‘Errors and Omissions Expected’. He is indemnifying himself against any possible legal action. It covers the shopkeeper from any omissions and errors. For the money that I get from the taxpayer, I cannot have omissions and errors. Can the finance minister claim EOE type of immunity? Certainly not.

Another big idea in the Budget is that of the bad banks. When will it be operationalised?I have not said that. What I am setting up is not a bad bank. It’s ac-tually a formulation by which we will have a holding company to be held by all the banks. The Government may give a little amount to it. But it’s entirely the banks’ own arrangement. It’s a company into which all these NPAs will go and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will provide the supervisory guidance. And once these NPAs go into it, through asset reconstruction companies that are in the open market, there will be a process of bidding and

buying at a certain value, looking at the actual value of that com-pany on that particular day and so on. Already, banks have been making provisions for these NPAs over the years and, strictly speaking, by now some of these assets are left with only 15 or 20 per cent of the value. The rest has eroded. Now, if they are the ones going into this holding company, they will be buying through a competitive bidding process that is open. They will take this asset, giving a certain amount of money, and from that money banks will receive whatever they are expected to receive. As it is, they are shorn of the value. And the mechanism will help banks get out of this. Why banks cannot do this instead of giving it to a holding company is a legitimate question. But banks do not have the wherewithal to deal with this. They are expected to run the bank, lend, make money out of it, keep the books, and spread the banking culture. They are not here to value it, handle assets and dispose of them. If that is the reason for a bank to sit on these NPAs, government has to constantly fill the provisions—equity capital—to run it. How long can this go on? Again, there is the

principle of taxpayers’ money—am I go-ing to use it to fill these gaps? Instead, if I give this taxpayer money for lending, it will make the economy a lot more robust. I have to adhere to this principle of being honest with the taxpayer: give him the returns for his honest money and not shove it down unending black holes or pour it down businesses that cannot run well. That is the philosophy. This is the disruption that the Budget would do. The holding companies will get operational once the Budget session is over.

Once the debts are off the books, the cost of lending has to come down. How will this play into the investment cycle?Banks will have more money to lend. If the NPA burden is removed from their head, the money that they earn will be available for banking business.

You have announced several initia-tives for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs). But how do you propose to handle their funda-mental problem: access to credit? Are you going to coordinate with the RBI to figure a way out?I think the solution cannot just be one-sided. There are different aspects which limit an MSME from credit. It could be the nature of the entity’s operation where the flow of its earnings has a different cal-endar from that of the bank. The bank’s

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i used the pandemic to clean up the books. That’s why you find that funding for Fci is not kept out of the balance sheet. the nssF should earn the maximum for people who are investing in it. We have clearly acknowledged where an item should actually be and where it should not be. there is no stealth

What i am setting up is not a bad bank. it’s a formulation by which we will have a holding company for all the banks. it’s a company into which all nPas will go and the rBi will provide the guidance. Once the nPas go into it, through asset reconstruction companies in the open market, there will be a process of bidding and buying



credit servicing calendar does not match with an MSME whose payment calendars are very different. As a result, it is constant-ly borrowing to keep this calendar going. That’s one problem. Second, is the compa-ny big enough to be under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime? Because once it comes into GST, it has some advantages. Its input credits can be got back. Then, if it is on a TReDS platform (an online mecha-nism for facilitating the financing of trade receivables of MSMEs through multiple financiers that pulls in many private com-panies, PSUs and public sector banks), it gets discounting benefits. The biggest problem for the MSME is whether it’s a government or a large corporate body to whom it supplies. Payments may not come on time. Today, the Government does not sit on payments beyond 45 days. There are ministers like us who breathe down the system to pay up. But no one in government can tell a corporate body to pay up. They know their business and how to run it, and I fully respect that. In a way, they also state in their annual report to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs how much they owe their suppliers. But all this does not help MSMEs. So, when you talk about an MSME’s problem of accessing credit, it’s not a problem of only banks not providing funds.

When you talk about an MSME, it’s also not a homogenous problem—a problem across the board. Yet today, this Govern-ment, even during a pandemic, has given a lot of time, money, energy and application of mind to make sure that we understand each one of these problems. Let me give you an example. Emer-gency credit was given to MSMEs to provide additional liquid-ity without additional security demands. This is just so that the MSME got money to meet the new demand. But it’s a unit which is already an NPA. Even before the pandemic. So banks will not give it additional liquidity. Thus, we came up with another scheme. A lesser known but a critical one: the subordinate debt scheme. Why did we come up with it? We said: your company per se may not meet the bank’s requirements to get some additional loan, but you as a promoter can get that loan. Tell us what your share is in the company and you can get debt as an individual on the basis of that. Take that debt from us, but put it as debt in your company. The moment you show it as equity, the bank will give you money. We made that arrangement and quite a number of pre-Covid NPAs could access these funds. We expanded the definition of MSMEs. By that, they became beneficiaries of many schemes. We also came up with a rule that in government tenders less than Rs 200 crore, global tenders will not be allowed.

The middle class feels left out. What do you have to say about that?As with MSMEs, this is not one vertical group. It is spread across

the board. So when I give, let’s say, interest subvention or tax-re-lated exemptions for affordable housing, is it not for the middle class? When I talk about better skill training and education facili-ties, is that not for the middle class? In the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), we came up with a scheme where we told employers that if you take back people we will bear the employee’s contribution for the next two years. Is that not for the middle class? I can go on. Rs 5 lakh Ayushman Bharat scheme—is that not for the middle class?

Your Budget has defined policy focus on healthcare to include drinking water. Is this similar to redefining poverty by going beyond mere calorie consumption?Why did we do this? What does the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan tell us? Many health-related peer group reviews said that because of Swachh Bharat, there has been a drastic reduction in serious illnesses among women and children. This means health is di-rectly influenced by sanitation, clean drinking water and overall civic cleanliness. I took a conscious call on this because health per se will get money—but I cannot look at health as a separate silo involving only treating patients who come with illnesses, or even as one only involving a preventive, curative and wellness approach. What’s the point in giving money to a hospital to buy the best machines, imported gadgets for diagnoses, etcetera, if it’s overflowing with filth? We have to address the issue holistically.

Do you feel vindicated? You have been a target of vilification campaigns by leaders of the opposition.I am doing what I am expected to do. I am not averse to criticism. I am okay with people giving me suggestions, not this way but in some other way. It concerns me only to the point that I want to keep my eyes and ears open always to accept good advice. n

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When i give interest subvention or tax-related exemptions for affordable housing, is it not for the middle class? When i talk about better education facilities, is that not for the middle class? in ePFO, we told employers if they took back people we would bear the employee’s contribution for two years. is that not for the middle class?

15 february 202150

inance Minister nirmala sitharaman had promised that this post-pandemic Bud-get would be “one never seen before”. and in large measure, she and the Government have delivered. the Budget is a formal mark-er of a transition to the third leg of a “sur-vive, revive and thrive” strategy which has been the ostensible response to the covid

public health crisis. acknowledging the severity of the economic loss, this is every bit a growth-oriented Budget as we could ever have expected, reversing course from the fiscal discipline and prudence which have been this Government’s fiscal thinking. it is aligned with the economic survey’s support of the need for a countercyclical fiscal stance, arguing that boosting growth will be the best bet to sustain india’s debt. 2020 was not a nor-mal cyclical downturn, but a once-in-a-century shock causing a permanent economic loss. Yet, with fiscal prudence temporarily in abeyance, there is also a commitment to Fiscal responsibility and Budget Management (FrBM) and fiscal consolidation over the next five years. Global credit ratings agencies have also sup-ported this stance, arguably since this seems to have now become the fiscal consensus.

every Budget has an embedded political economy perspective. the proposal to pri-vatise two public sector banks (PsBs) and one general insurance company points to a deep commitment to its economic beliefs.

the Budget has now manifestly shifted to the thrive phase, articulating a compel-ling vision under the rubric of atmanirbhar Bharat, leveraging multiple proposals to boost both investment and demand. this will help to take india to sustained high growth in the medium term. these include an aggressive roadmap for monetisation of the Government’s physical and financial assets, increased focus on affordable hous-ing which can provide a boost to the long

backward and forward construction linkages, and measures to attract foreign capital, including tax holidays and exemptions for aircraft leasing companies at Gujarat international Finance tec (GiFt) city.

Growth and revenue assumptions are realistic. nominal GDP growth for FY22 is forecast at 14.4 per cent, which is likely to be an underestimate and therefore will help the fiscal maths. this will also act as a buffer against the uncertainties and risks of a second surge of infections in india, and subsequently more restrictions, although the chances are falling, with the vaccina-tion programme rollout.

is the Budget trying to window-dress spends? a laudatory aspect is that the Budget further increases transparency. at least one large off-balance-sheet item, small savings loans to the Food corporation of india (Fci) for food subsidy, will now have direct budgetary allocations. this is a further advance from the mea-sure of enhanced disclosures in earlier Budgets of borrowings by government agencies to fund Government of india schemes.

consider Fci. Of the total borrowings as of December 2020 of rs 3.74 lakh crore, rs 3 lakh crore is from the national social secu-

rity Fund (nssF). this was rs 46,000 crore higher from the level at end-March 2020. During FY17 to FY20, Fci borrowings from nssF were more than rs 2.5 lakh crore. in FY21 re, the Government has allocated rs 1.36 lakh crore to pay down part of the debt (and an additional rs 55,000 crore in FY22). this payment is part of the extra rs 3.14 lakh crore allocated for food subsidy (compared to FY20). Hence, a like-to-like comparison of direct Government spends would need to be reduced by rs 1.36 lakh crore.

infrastructure capex is a key thrust area of the Budget. this lies at the intersection of boosting both supply and demand. capital expenditures will increase to rs 5.54 lakh crore in FY22 from rs 4.12 lakh crore bud-

the New CoNseNsusa blueprint for sustained growth

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The Budget is a formal marker of a transition to the third leg of a ‘Survive, Revive and Thrive’ strategy which has been the ostensible response to the Covid public health crisis

Saugata Bhattacharya

OpenOmics 2021Growth


geted in FY21. these spends are to be augmented by long-term debt financing by the proposed Development Financial institu-tion for infrastructure projects. even in FY21, the pace of capex spends has accelerated from november onwards.

Following on with the measures to incentivise credit off-take—which have been a key pillar of the post pandemic stimu-lus measures—the Budget proposes asset reconstruction and Management companies to take over existing stressed loans of PsBs and then sell them to potential investors. While details of the structure and capitalisation of these companies are awaited, and several thorny issues, such as valuations of the assets to be transferred, are also awaited, this can potentially help to clean up bank books and increase credit offtake from a significant share of the banking sector. the budgeted allocation of rs 20,000 crore for PsB recapitalisation will also help.

as was to be expected after a public health crisis, there is a large increase in allocations for health, vaccines, drinking wa-ter and sanitation. expenditure on health and wellbeing is pro-posed to be increased by 137 per cent! note that the healthcare sector will play a crucial role in job creation, with the potential to absorb people displaced from farming and urban areas by retraining as secondary and tertiary healthcare providers in small towns and rural areas.

in addition to the higher spends to support growth, the Bud-get has also sought to improve sentiment and confidence. reduc-

ing the window for re-opening tax as-sessments from the present six years to three, while limiting tax assessments in serious evasion cases only with con-currence of the highest ranking tax of-ficer, will reduce uncertainty. the re-sult of the progressive simplifications in filing tax returns has resulted in a large increase in returns filed over the past six years. so, too, is the concilia-tion Mechanism for speedy resolution of disputes for contractors who work with government and central Public sector enterprises (cPses).

there will be challenges in imple-menting the ambitious measures. steps for fiscal consolidation to meet the target of a fiscal deficit less than 4.5 per cent by FY26 will have to be thought out and implemented vigor-ously. On the revenue side, this will entail rising tax compliance, aggres-sive disinvestment and asset mon-etisation, realising taxes which are stuck in litigation and disputes. On the expenditure side, there will have to be expenditure rationalisation, to increase spending efficiencies.

note that the agri infra cess on petrol and diesel is price neutral for consumers, being a replace-ment of a tax with a cess and not an additional charge, and hence will not add to inflation. However, the higher spends entail a borrowing programme higher than expected. this will need to be managed, since the support from banks will likely be lower in FY22, with expected increase in credit demand. the reserve Bank of india (rBi) will need to lend support to manage any undue rise in bond yields and significant market disruptions, although it too will be constrained with the need to gradually drain liquidity over the next year. as is always the case, imple-menting the multiple and complex Budget proposals will be crucial for translating the fiscal levels to sustained growth and will need coordinated policy response between the centre and state governments.

this is one of the quinquennial budgets which coincide with the tabling of a Finance commission report. More than ever before, federalism—fiscal as well as other dimensions—has become one of the crucial pillars for implement-ing reforms. as with any economic plan, execution will be key to translating intent to outcome. Managing the political economy of the transformation will be the lodestone for high sustained growth. n

Saugata Bhattacharya is Executive Vice President and Chief Economist at Axis Bank. Views are personal


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Farmer FriendlyFood subsidy and minimum support price data show the persistence oF the government’s generosity

OpenOmics 2021AGRICULTURE

By Siddharth Singh

Workers dry paddy grain in North 24 Parganas,

West Bengal, January 30

In the excitement about the Government’s huge expenditure to spur growth in the 2021-2022 Union Budget and the slew of reforms announced in the finance minister’s speech, an extraordinary set of figures was largely ignored. tucked away in one of the an-nexures of the speech was a table detailing the money spent by the Government on pur-chasing the crops sold by farmers. to call it money-spinner would be an understatement.

it is a dreary tactic to show the Government’s benevolence towards the largest pool of working people in india through a set of statistics. But these are contested times. A large group of farmers has effectively put a siege around Delhi that is more reminiscent of a medieval military situation than a group of citizens protesting in a democracy. the pertinence of the data in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech is a product of this

Photo Getty imaGes

15 february 202156

volatile political situation. It calls out the lie that the Narendra Modi Government is anti-farmer and that sons of the soil are about to get a raw deal.

The facts are very different as the 2021-2022 Budget shows. In the seven years from 2014-2015 to 2021-2022, with data for the lat-ter year still rolling in, the Government spent a gigantic horde of cash on farmers: Rs 3.09 lakh crore was spent on Minimum Sup-port Price (MSP) operations for wheat while another Rs 7.48 lakh crore was spent on MSP for paddy (rice), making for a tidy total of Rs 10.5 lakh crore. This is, to put it mildly, a mind-boggling sum.

All these extraordinary numbers were delivered by the min-ister in her traditional deadpan manner, “Our Government is committed to the welfare of farmers. The MSP regime has un-dergone a sea change to assure price that is at least 1.5 times the cost of production across all commodities. The procurement has also continued to increase at a steady pace. This has resulted in increase in payment to farmers substantially.” What could not be hidden was that the number of farmers who benefited from this huge dollop of help had more than doubled in the case of wheat (from nearly 20.5 lakh in 2016-2017 to 43.36 lakh in 2021-2022) and doubled in the case of rice as well but with much greater absolute numbers (from 76.85 lakh to an estimated 1.54 crore for the same two years).

Naysayers, being naysayers, can always say what is in the

past is, well, in the past. But reading the fine print of the Budget tells us that this state of affairs is unlikely to end. If one looks at the sums allocated for food subsidy for three fiscals since 2019, the story is one of a rising level of resources being devoted to help farmers. The details on expenditure in the Budget show this clearly. Un-der ‘Demand 15’, the subhead where details of food subsidy are to be found, the Government allocated Rs 75,000 crore for this purpose to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in 2019-2020. These were the ‘actuals’ for that year. If one adds another part of that demand—food subsidy for de-centralised procurement under the National Food Security Act (NFSA)—another Rs 33,508 crore has been dished out for that year. That makes for a total of Rs 1.08 lakh crore. It is worth noting that this figure is lower than the actual money dished out to farmers for wheat and rice as listed in the minister’s speech. This is due to crop marketing seasons and Bud-gets being out of sync. But the sums involved are huge.

The last year—the year of the pan-demic—witnessed a gigantic bump in the food subsidy figure: direct payment to FCI under NFSA and for decentralised pro-curement under NFSA tallied to Rs 4.22 lakh crore when the revised figures for 2020-2021 were released. This represented a phenomenal 266 per cent increase over the budgeted figure of Rs 1.15 lakh crore. But one can say 2020 was a horrible year and the Government did what was morally right: it fed poor citizens who had no way to get food on their own.

But even here the story, one or the other, ends up with the farmers of north India who are the main beneficiaries of Govern-ment largesse. The system is complicated: the farmers produce, FCI buys from them and then ration shops hand over food to the poor. The flow of money in the reverse direction is from the Government dishing out food subsidies to FCI and the latter giv-ing it back to the farmers. Of course, the reverse flow is much slower and takes place over many years as state governments and FCI squabble over who owes how much. But the one thing that stands out in this story is the quaint expression ‘food subsidy’. It is actually ‘farmers’ subsidy’ and that too just a part of it. When one adds subsidies for fertilisers, fuels, seeds and many other items that remain hidden in the nooks and crannies of Budget documents, the farmer comes out not as someone who is braving cold and apathy on National Highway Number 1, but someone who is part of a well-entrenched interest group. The sums that

Sacks of wheat at the grain market in

Gautam Buddh Nagar,

Uttar Pradesh, April 2020

OpenOmics 2021AGRICULTURE


any government is forced to shell out painfully even as it smiles and says it stands with the farmer is testimony to that.

I N JUNe lAST yeAR, at the height of the Covid-19 pan-demic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the plan to roll out ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’, a scheme that

would allow portability of food entitlements across India. The timing of the announcement was significant. India had just wit-nessed a gigantic internal migration after a stringent lockdown was announced to contain the spread of the Covid-19 virus. The Government’s administrative machinery swung into action to help migrants, to ensure availability of rations (and hence the huge jump in the food subsidy bill), but the time had come to en-sure portability. The idea made economic sense as well. Workers bereft of jobs and incomes are certain to rush back to their homes as they are unlikely to go hungry there. But as the 2020 migration showed, this not only caused a huge human dislocation but an equally large economic one. Deprived of their workers, busi-ness and industries, too, entered a phase of distress. The chain of events that began with the pandemic ended up causing acute financial distress across the economic system. If only workers could stay where they worked, things would have been very different.

Fast-forward to the 2021-2022 Budget. For the coming fiscal, too, the food subsidy bill is high. It has come down from the high seen in 2020-2021 but at Rs 2.42 lakh crore, it remains 110 per cent higher than 2019-2020, the ‘normal’ year before the pan-demic. This is, no doubt, due to the rollout of the ‘One Nation, One Ration Card’ plan as experts say this will lead to a higher offtake of foodgrain across states. But it is also undeniable that the Government remains committed to wheat and rice farmers of north India, who will continue to gain the most out of the Government’s purchases.

None of these facts, and India’s complicated and expensive system of food procurement that has evolved over time, is able to convince critics that the Government is not out to shortchange the allegedly beleaguered farmers. The fact is that reform of the system is not even on the horizon. Far from the three agriculture reform laws passed by Parliament ‘destroying’ the mandi sys-tem, the flow of money in the food economy shows the system is expanding and not contracting.

The inconsistency in the structure of argument is worth pointing out. There is by now a formidable critique of the Gov-ernment’s approach to the three farm laws. What is interesting to note is that the same set of critics is saying the Government has not done enough for the poor. looking at the bloated food subsidy bill one could indeed say that this is an anti-poor mea-sure. Until some years ago, the same critics who today defend farmers from north India and grain commission agents—arhti-yas—used to say it was against the poor people of India. Ideally, with their championing of these farmers, they should have aban-doned the anti-poor rhetoric that accompanies every Budget. In reality, successive Budgets under the Modi Government have

continued giving more money in the hands of the poor and the farmers at the same time. That is the secret for continuing fiscal deficits seen over the years. This was very clearly understood as a political constraint that had to be respected if economic reforms had to even have a half-decent chance.

More substantively, the problem with this melange of criti-cisms is that they lack consistency. The 2021-2022 Budget is held to lack demand-side initiatives while focusing too much on the supply side. In rural India, this distinction breaks down if too fine a point is put on it. Food subsidy, which is more a producers’ sub-sidy, keeps the economy of many north Indian states lubricated, acting as a source of demand. Similarly, if poor citizens get food entitlements, a large part of their consumption basket is taken care of, leaving them some money to spend towards other needs, in effect, acting as something of a support for demand elsewhere.

Then, there is the issue of alleged breakdown of federal bound-aries with the Centre legislating on what is claimed to be a state subject: agriculture. But here, as in the supply-versus-demand debate on the Budget, this is too much of an artificial distinction. The fact is that MSPs and their effective implementation require financial wherewithal of the kind that no individual state possesses. It is also a fact that these purely transactional, market relationships are now viewed as something of support programmes that provide public goods. Ideally, if this indeed was a federal is-sue, state governments should go ahead and devise their own support programmes. But this—as anyone with even a cursory familiarity with fi-nances of state governments knows—is impossible. State governments will mouth the federal principle but quietly want the Centre to foot the bill for what they are in no position to provide. It sounds clunky and awkward but the Centre seems to be providing a local public good when it foots the exorbitant bill for food subsidy.

These systems were devised at a time when India was a fledg-ling and insecure nation-state. It had little money to buy food from international markets and had to establish its own systems to meet its urgent needs. But those were also days when practical concerns were kept away from partisan and toxic ideological debates. The trouble for Prime Minister Modi is that he is trying to reform a system that is hostage to special interests and critics who care little about what is rational for India. n

This Budget is held to lack demand-side initiatives while focusing too much on the supply side. In rural India, this distinction breaks down if too fine a point is put on it. Food subsidy, more a producers’ subsidy, keeps many north Indian states lubricated, acting as a source of demand

15 february 202158

t’s February 1st, Monday, and aman Pahwa, owner of a unit that comes under the umbrella of a micro, small and medium enterprise (MsMe), heaves a sigh of relief. Finance Minister Nirmala sitharaman has just wrapped up reading the 2021-2022 union budget and there are no devils there. Pahwa is far from happy though. Covid-19 has taken a

toll on his business and even though it’s February and one would imagine things to be returning to normal, his business is nowhere close to pre-pandemic levels.

His plight is not reflected in the booming sensex. He has ven-dors and staff to pay but he is not sure if the banks will be willing to lend him even when the business comes back—and he needs capital. Pahwa’s small enterprise, based in Ghaziabad on the out-skirts of Delhi in uttar Pradesh, is engaged in the manufacture of mechanical parts used by steel and automobile makers.

“We are unable to get any credit from any bank if there’s a de-cline in the turnover in any of the past three years. 2019-2020 was already a low due to the slowdown in the automobile sector and then came Covid. the budget doesn’t change any of that,” he says.

MsMes in India have had it tough. Often derided by the elite as a cabal of small-time manufacturers and traders evading taxes, governments for long adopted a piecemeal approach while ad-

I

A Song for the UnSUngIn doUblIng the AllocAtIon for MSMeS , the bUdget hAS recognISed theIr potentIAl In creAtIng eMployMent And booStIng growth

By DhirenDra TripaThi

Workers in a jeans factory

in Ballari, Karnataka

OpenOmics 2021MSME


dressing their concerns—access to cheap capital, labour and raw materials and affordable power. this, when MsMes con-tribute about 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and 40 per cent of exports while employing 110 million people, about a quarter of the country’s workforce.

MsMes began to be noticed only in the 2000s when many credited them for China’s emergence on the world economic map. but stories like Pahwa’s still abound in India where the ground-level reality can be very different from what the noise tells you. sitharaman’s budget does attempt to alleviate their sufferings but they remain the unsung, if not the abused, lot.

at the peak of the pandemic and what could be construed as a welcome break from the past, the reserve bank of India (rbI) and

the Government worked in tandem to lower MsMes’ cost of bor-rowing by facilitating cheaper capital to non-banking finance companies, the major lenders to MsMes. a long moratorium on repayment of loans was also put in place. but Pahwa’s fear points out that the plight is far from over.

“banks can do much better in showing their respect for the MsMe segment, from the current feeling of ‘affirmative ac-tion’—both in terms of proactive product development for the sector as well as customer service,” says Mumbai-based indepen-dent market commentator srinath sridharan.

the budget attempts to boost the lot of MsMes in a creditable way. It has doubled the support to the MsMe sector from last year’s budgeted estimates by setting aside rs 157 billion for the next financial year. One may point out the fact that the Govern-ment spent only three-fourths of its 2020-2021 budgeted target of rs 75.72 billion in the ongoing financial year and hence was compelled to set aside a higher amount for the next. be that as it may, a doubling of the figure is creditable.

the Government, under its ‘atmanirbhar bharat abhiyan’ (self-reliant India programme) launched last year when the pandemic raged, also redefined the parameters to determine an MsMe. the idea was to help them grow and compete at a bigger scale. Only domestic firms are now allowed to compete in state tenders worth up to rs 2 billion to sup-port the Government’s ‘Make-in-India’ initia-tive to augment domestic production.

according to the new definitions, MsMes with an investment of rs 10 million and an-nual turnover of rs 50 million will be called micro-units. units with an investment of rs 100 million and annual turnover of rs 500 million will be termed small units while those with an investment of rs 500 million and annual turnover of rs 2.50 billion will be classified as medium units. exports form part of the turnover limit.

When it comes to improving the financials, sitharaman’s budget takes a step forward. In line with its objective to bring about discipline on the part of various stakeholders—taxpay-ers, corporates and lenders—the budget proposes to set up al-ternative methods of debt resolution and a special framework for MsMes.

the new framework could be a gamechanger for both MsMes and NbFCs as their lives are often intertwined—more and healthier MsMes means more business for NbFCs. MsMes, sometimes for little blame of their own, find themselves in a

A Song for the UnSUngIn doUblIng the AllocAtIon for MSMeS , the bUdget hAS recognISed theIr potentIAl In creAtIng eMployMent And booStIng growth

The Budget’s new framework could be a gamechanger for both MSMEs and non-banking financial corporations as their lives are often intertwined—more and healthier MSMEs means more business for NBFCs

15 february 202160

sticky spot with banks and then find it hard to secure loans, as highlighted by Pahwa.

NbFCs with a minimum asset size of rs 1 billion will now be able recover their loans with greater ease from defaulters, many of whom are MsMes. Minimum loan size eligible for debt recovery under the securitisation and reconstruction of Financial assets and enforcement of security Interest act, 2002 (sarFaesI act) is proposed to be more than halved to rs 2 mil-lion for NbFCs from rs 5 million. this will help NbFCs chase fly-by-night operators and help clean up the system.

“this is an effective step towards ushering credit discipline and in the long-term will increase the penetration of credit to small businesses,” says shachindra Nath, executive chairman and managing director of u GrO Capital, a bse-listed small business lending fintech platform.

but the problems are deeper. Nitin Jain, a garments manu-facturer and trader based in the wholesale market of Delhi’s Gandhinagar, laments that Goods and services tax (Gst) re-funds take long and often don’t come, mired in bureaucracy.

Jain laments that the GstN website, the platform for filing returns and all matters related to Gst, is down every time the due date for Gst return filing is near. “We are then forced to file later with a penalty,” he says. the Gst framework has been in operation for more than three years. these can no longer be called teething problems. the malaise is deeper.

“the entire process has gone physical against the automated system that was intended. several documents are asked for physical verification,” says Pahwa, adding that the cut in im-ports duties on steel, as announced by the budget, would do little to repair the plumbing issues.

ask him why, he says competition is stiff. “Clients refuse to accept any hike. the moment you ask for an increase, they tell you to send the quote and the next moment, they have another vendor ready to offer their product at the same rates”. believe it or not, he says his prices have remained the same for clients for the last eight to 10 years.

It’s the woes of such MsMe owners that are still to be addressed.

sridharan has a solution. “One of the thrust areas which could help MsMes is digital payments. that could bring in ease of getting payments on time as well as with their compliances. this would also enable further and cheaper credit access with better visibility of their financials,” says sridharan.

the budget, in doubling the allocation for MsMes, recognis-es their potential in creating employment and boosting growth. steps like the re-definition and a new dispute resolution mechanism are good too. but the road to salvation for MsMes is long, and still challenged by the bureaucracy. High cost of capital, stiff compliance and unskilled labour are just some others. unless those are addressed, MsMes will continue to be

seen as one with the begging bowl. that’s not a pleasant sight. n

He GOOD NeWs is that in recent times, the MsMe sector is getting as much serious policy attention in India’s economic discourse as big business. the bad news is that so far there is more talk than walk, and where walk is con-cerned, more of the same palliative ac-tions rather than a clear strategy based on a fresh look to build India’s MsMe

Version 2.0 over the next 10 years. a CrIsIL report headline says that they are facing an ‘existential’ crisis. existential crises don’t get solved from a place of ‘what is and why it is so’ but from a place of ‘what can be and how to make it so’.

While large companies have emerged from 2020 battered but getting to live another day and several have managed to im-prove operating margins and ride the come-back of demand, MsMes have mostly not had the resilience to do so. several are near-dead from working capital asphyxiation and unable to recapture the demand they once had, presumably because they competed on cost and had no differentiation. even if you offered loans aplenty, many of them are not in a position to qualify for them or digest them.

the obvious question is why struggle so much to try and stop MsMes from dying? Why oxygenate their entire planet to help the strong and weak breathe instead of allowing the fittest to survive? after all, that’s market capitalism and it is jungle fires (admittedly, not man-made ones) that keep the jungle healthy as a whole.

the answer always comes in the form of how big their con-tribution to employment is. Ninety-nine per cent of all MsMes are micro and half are in rural India and half in urban and spread all over, geographically. add to it the dismal occupation and ed-ucation profile of India’s young generation and it is clear that without them, India’s ‘let’s pretend’ demographic dividend will be in a far worse place. all evidence from around the world, and our own experience in India, shows that large companies are increasingly using more technology and fewer people to get the job done. If we have some hope of upward mobility and up-skilling large numbers of people over the next decade, we need MsMes to be healthy.

so yes, we need to oxygenate ‘planet micro enterprises’ for their survival and ours. there are many ways to oxygenate this planet. there is an old favourite, tried and tested way of cluster-ing them geographically and oxygenating them through shared services, both government-subsidised and via service providers who are happy to do price-cost of customer acquisition (so many

b e c A U S e SMAll IS bIg

Rama BijapuRkaR

T

Dhirendra Tripathi is a Delhi-based journalist

OpenOmics 2021MSME

b e c A U S e SMAll IS bIg There are many Ways To oxygenaTe micro enTerprises

in one place) trade-offs. We need to create many more clusters.If the objective is to preserve employment, then for all

income-tax filing sMes above rs 1 crore turnover, audited ac-counts are available and employee wage costs are available, and some part of those can be defrayed in a manner that makes it as scam-proof as possible. People have dismissed this as ‘you don’t know how jugaadu and corrupt MsMes are.’ true perhaps, but very unfair to single them out. big business has scammed us as badly, or worse. We are a corrupt society. but what naysayers need to notice is that in today’s India, with its digital infrastruc-ture and footprint, it is getting harder to jugaad.

raising the limit of auditing for tax filing is counterpro-

ductive and old school. We have to do the opposite. We have nudged more and more MsMes into the Gst and It returns ambit. Let’s build on these gains and make it easier for them to stay there. ‘Declutter-digitise-simplify’ to make all compliances easier, incentivising more and more MsMes to come in, today reeling or daunted by costs and complexity of doing so. so if we widen their digital footprint, we have better data and we can oxygenate them better.

another way to oxygenate them is to find segmented solu-tions, one size doesn’t fit all. the trouble with mega-label policy is that it doesn’t really work at the micro sector ‘x’ size, ‘x’ type of business level. In fact, this should be the basis for setting up

industry associations so that we can be more granular about prob-lems and solution space discov-ery and dialogue. too complex? sadly, our wonderful macro, as has been so often pointed out, is the meta of so many really tiny micros.

If only the glossy reports of consultants which talk about what MsMes need to do to im-prove product differentiation, upskilling, improving technol-ogy, etcetera, can dedicate as


While large companies have emerged from 2020 battered but getting to live another day and several have managed to improve operating margins and ride the comeback of demand, MSMEs have mostly not had the resilience to do so


15 february 202162

much time to the task of what all it takes to truly create a vibrant ecosystem. Once this happens, differentiation, going up the value chain, etcetera, will auto-matically happen. Greed and youth are deadly seekers of opportunity. I have of-ten written about the splendid business instincts of the micro entrepreneurs best exemplified as ‘tea with sugar rs 5, with-out rs 8’ or how all small tailors learn the latest fashion real-time with their hitting big stores, or the footwear exporter who says ‘yes, I can make the design’, bags the order and figures out how to make it.

Interestingly, we have a caste system already—startups are not MsMes in our minds. so no, let’s not waste energy on them—let’s just not fix what ain’t broke. this Government has itchy fingers and meddles a lot.

N OW tHe bIG question—how do we enable access to funds? the common complaint for the longest time has been that the MsMe books are dodgy. Incentivising

good practices through lowering the administration burden and the cost of doing so is the only way. Many are today willing to comply—the upside of being legit is far more interesting today. the changed societal aspirations we have identified as causing voter behaviour shift, the need to change the status quo for a ‘shot at a better life’, also applies to micro owner-driven enter-prises with ideas and aspirations. so, it’s back to the elephant in the room—Primary sector Lending (PsL) hasn’t worked too well and the jury is still out on the Micro units Development and refinance agency (MuDra), but we are hopeful.

Let’s segment another way. the ones who are part of a ven-dor/distributor ecosystem are okay. If banks won’t lend to them, fintechs will do so gladly. then there’s new-age non-banking financial companies (NbFCs) who will build linkages to other businesses of theirs and lend selectively to another set of MsMes. these are engines that are being built and we need to fuel them by increasing the pool from which they can draw.

It is fashionable to vilify the public sector banking system, but there is so much to learn and keep from there. Private lega-cy banks are not interested. they still talk of old-world ideas of ‘no collateral’, ‘bad books’, and generally, ‘it’s not my problem to fix the system’. this is called business development. the old India Inc hasn’t been surviving too well. there are enough instances of small, tiny companies becoming significant, the law of speedy compounding which banks get quite well. the lazy idea seems to be to bring efficiency to non-performing assets (NPas) also. One rs 4,000 crore NPa is more efficient than 4,000 NPas worth a crore each!

I reached out to very eminent Psu bankers who had cut their

teeth on branch banking in the 1960s and 1970s and moved into senior po-sitions prior to retiring.

One of them recalls how the state bank of India (sbI) had created a spe-cial cadre of staff drawn from within the banking system called develop-ment officers, posted in Kolhapur, sangli, Guntur and so on and, of course, in branches near industrial states with a mandate to develop and guide MsMes, and even in those days, they did cash flow-based lend-ing. He remembers one such sMe branch he was in, as a branch man-ager—he said it was the andheri branch where he did rs 19 crore in advances (1968-1969) profitably.

Development officer jobs were field, not desk, jobs and branches actually did banking, and were not the dumb terminals of today’s cen-

tralised banking system. He said they would sit with borrow-ers and help them with their applications, showing them what financial planning was. He adds ruefully, “today, CbI would have come and arrested me for collusion.”

a dedicated force for sMes were the warriors, field officers who were up on their game. Field officers would validate things like upward revision of electricity bills, wage bills, raw mate-rial purchase bills or a request for additional credit. the branch manager would review everyday vouchers of all account holders (think how easy that would be in today’s world of aI and algo-rithms!) and see who is an MsMe borrower paying and who is he receiving from.

today, it’s not fashionable to see banking as a social institu-tion. but there is a new emergent business narrative which says social purpose is as important as shareholder returns. In fact, the two are linked.

rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard university compellingly describes a concept called institutional logic and says companies ‘are more than instruments of making money, they are vehicles for accomplishing societal purpose.’

We need a cultural change to fix this MsMe thing. today, all the tools are there like never before. We need the MsMes—for ex-ports, employment, global outsourced manufacturing activities.

Let’s look back to the future on several counts. asian Paints, Nirma, Haldiram, Haldyn Glass were small once. Let’s strategise and execute our way through this and build a vibrant healthy MsMe ecosystem. For the first time, many new pieces are available and in shape. It will come together. n

Rama Bijapurkar is a market strategy consultant and the author of a Never-before World: tracking the

evolution of Consumer India. Views are personal

Raising the limit of auditing for tax filing is counterproductive. We have to do the opposite. We have nudged more and more MSMEs into the GST and IT returns ambit. Let’s build on these gains and make it easier for them to stay there. ‘Declutter-digitise-simplify’ to make all compliances easier, incentivising more MSMEs to come in

OpenOmics 2021MSME

We welcome the measures announced by Hon’ble Finance Minister in Union Budget 2021-

22. The budget rightly strikes a reasonable balance between addressing the key pillars of Health & Well-being, Inclusive Development, Human Capital, Innovation and R&D, apart from laying the path for a robust economy by providing a major infrastructure boost. The array of measures announced are in line with people as well as market expectations and will go a long way to bring the nation back on track by boosting spending on infrastructure and rural development while fighting the pandemic through health focused measures.

As far as the financial sector is concerned, further recapitalization of Rs 20,000 crore for PSBs in the FY 2021-22 is a welcome step. The other measures which are expected to

strengthen the sector are as under: • Various measures have been announced on the infrastructure front, which are expected to take the economy into a new trajectory of growth. In addition to over a 34% increase in capital expenditure, new highway projects have also been announced. • Setting up of a professionally managed Development Financial Institution will catalyze infrastructure funding.• Creation of an ARC and Asset Management Company that will take over the stressed assets and sell to Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), is also welcome as it will help improve the health of the banking sector through impact on price discovery and improving competition in the market. • The NCLT system will be strengthened

and e-Courts will be adopted and alternate mechanism of debt resolution will be set up. •The massive program for monetization of completed/ running projects will help in creating required resources through the instruments like INVITs.• Other important announcements of bringing in the IPO of LIC, hiking the FDI limit in insurance increase to 74% from 49%, strategically divest 2 Public Sector Banks and 1 general insurance company, are steps in the right direction.

The voluntary scrapping policy proposed for discarding old commercial vehicles will boost the automobile industry. The gross borrowing programme is also helpful to maintain the fiscal health of the economy, while providing necessary funding towards growth and development of the infrastructure.<

AvenuesStatement of Shri CH S. S. Mallikarjuna Rao, MD & CEO, Punjab National Bank for Union Budget 2021-22

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hen Finance Minister n i rm al a S i th araman stood up in Parliament at 11aM on February 1st and began her Budget speech by declaring health and wellness to be one of its central pillars, no one was surprised. if not during

the pandemic, then when? Sitharaman claimed a 137 per cent increase in allocations on health, a jump that had the potential to take india’s health budget closer to the aim of 2.5 per cent of GDP but as she wrapped up her Budget speech an hour and a half later, it was clear that the fine print had a different story to tell.

Last fiscal, the health ministry was allocated Rs 67,112 crore though revised estimates were considerably higher. This year, the ministry has been allotted upwards of Rs 73,000 crore, a jump from last year’s figures but still lower than the revised estimates. The extras that make up the 137 per cent are Rs 35,000 crore for the vaccination drive underway and funds for sectors such as drinking water and sanitation, linked to health but not typically included under health. a new scheme, Pradhan Mantri atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, has been launched with an outlay of Rs 64,180 crore for the next six years with an aim to build health infrastructure, such as critical care hospital blocks and public health labs.

health and wellness, “pillars” for this year’s Budget, are held up by other pillars such as equitable, affordable and accountable healthcare accessible to all citizens. and in india, all these under-lying pillars still remain shaky. according to economic Survey 2020-21, on quality and access of healthcare, india is ranked 145 out of 180 countries. ‘Only few sub-Saharan countries, some pacific [sic] islands, nepal and Pakistan were ranked below india,’ says the report. The survey goes on to recommend that the focus has to be on building the healthcare system rather than merely on communicable diseases, ‘as the next healthcare crisis could possibly be drastically different from covid-19’.

For public health expert Dr chandrakant Lahariya, the 2021-2022 Budget is a well-articulated document but there are more than a few quibbles. The money earmarked for vaccine allotment, for instance, is a good development, he says, “but how will vaccine delivery strengthen the system?” What the Budget needed, according to him, was commitment to schemes in terms of financing that become a “line item in years to come”.

One of the objectives as envisaged by the national health Policy of 2017 is an increase in health spending to 2.5-3 per cent of GDP. currently it stands at around 1.5 per cent. “if we are looking at 2.5 per cent of GDP, then the trajectory of spending should have been far higher,” says Lahariya though he is hopeful that at least some aspect of the healthcare system will get strengthened.

Some experts are feeling let down, not in terms of policies

WO u t O f t h e pa n d e m i cP u t t i n g h e a lt h c a r e c e n t r e s ta g e i s t h e f i r s t s t e P i n overhauling the system

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but funds allocated. health directly affects the economic growth potential of a country with increased life expectancy alone rais-ing GDP growth rate by over 1 per cent. Out of pocket health ex-penditures (OOPe) push 7 per cent of indian families below the poverty line, according to a 2016 paper by US think-tank Brook-ings. india has one of the highest levels of OOPe in the world. it was precisely to tackle this that the Pradhan Mantri Jan arogya

Yojana was launched but its allocation has remained unchanged year-on-year at Rs 6,400 crore.

More than Rs 35,000 crore has been earmarked for the national health Mis-sion which focuses on primary health-care, but again the allocations have only increased at a compounded rate of 4 per cent between 2017-2018 and 2021-2022. “Over the last five years we have been hearing the right kind of noises coming from the powers that be as far as health is concerned. Government documents mince no words when it comes to our healthcare system but very little is be-ing done about it. This year, because of the pandemic, we had an opportunity to overhaul the system entirely but what we have got are tweaks,” says Oommen c Kurian, head of health initiative at Delhi-based think-tank ORF. it was the public healthcare system that stepped up when we really needed it, says Kurian talking about the pandemic, and to strengthen that, reforms have to come from the ground up. This means a focus on capital expenditure, infrastructure building and investment in human re-sources. “even now frontline workers are torn between the vaccination drive and regular duties. There is an urgent need to address the deficit of staff.” in-vestments in terms of basic infrastruc-ture at the block and district levels is a crucial piece to the overhauling of the primary healthcare system, our first defence against any disease. The newly launched Pradhan Mantri atmanirbhar

Swasth Bharat Yojana, with an outlay of Rs 64,180 crore for the next six years, does aim to address this concern as one of its goals seems to be the development of primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare. The longstanding demand for the regularisation and increase in salaries for frontline workers, such as accredited social health activists (aShas), who have been at the forefront in the pandemic remains unaddressed.

O u t O f t h e pa n d e m i cP u t t i n g h e a lt h c a r e c e n t r e s ta g e i s t h e f i r s t s t e P i n overhauling the system By Nikita doval

Medical workers tending to a

Covid-19 patient at Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital

in New Delhi, July 17, 2020

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however, a key thing to keep in mind is that public health in india is a state subject. The policies and programmes may flow from the centre but it is up to the state governments to ensure that these are implemented. States such as arunachal Pradesh, Goa and Kerala spend much more than the national average when it comes to public healthcare, while states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand are among the lowest. “Good policymaking requires sufficient funding but even the funding has two aspects: allocation and utilisation. States need to spend 8 per cent of their budgets on healthcare but we are still near the 4.5-5 per cent mark,” says Lahariya.

The healthcare aspect of the 2021-2022 Budget had an op-portunity to be truly dynamic but, experts say, it only meets the bare minimum, especially in the wake of the pandemic. That too is welcome, of course. economist Shamika Ravi says, “increased allocation raises long-term productivity. even access

to clean water substantially improves healthcare but the Bud-get also needs to establish health as an engine of growth.” Ravi argues that with rich countries ageing and the demographic divide on india’s side, there is an emerging healthcare demand that india can cater to but first we have to set our own house in order. “From research and development to hR, to governance, the pandemic could have been for india’s healthcare industry what Y2K was for our iT industry: a chance to pivot, but this hasn’t come into focus. We have to see health through the lens of growth and not just a social vision,” she says

health in india remains as much a matter of fund allocation as governance and the pandemic has shown that for the coun-try to be truly prepared, these have to go hand-in-hand. “The pandemic was the perfect opportunity for the government to go all out but we have let it go. The level of change that the indian healthcare system needs can come only through substantial funding and bureaucratic will, [with] both the centre and state working to their full capacity,” says Kurian. n

he ROLe OF the Ministry of health and Family Welfare has over many years been seen as providing a mix of some preventive and many clinical care services. Many critics suggested that it should be renamed the Depart-ment of illness care, since health was not promoted as a positive at-tribute. The problem lay in the fact that many of the social, economic,

environmental and commercial determinants of health lay in the policy and programme remit of other ministries. Their al-locations were never counted under the budget head of health. The health ministry’s budget itself stagnated around a very low level of public financing, inadequate for delivering the needed health services with efficiency and equity. as india’s public ex-penditure on health, centre and states combined, remained around 1 per cent of GDP for several decades, the perennially disappointing health budgets drew constant criticism for low ambition and allocation.

Finance Minister nirmala Sitharaman decided to buck the trend this year with the remarkably adroit move of creating a health and wellbeing budgetary head, combining the alloca-tion for the health systems, water and sanitation, nutrition and reduction of air pollution. This not only enabled her to project a holistic vision of health (with preventive, curative and promo-tive services) but also claim an increase of 137 per cent in the health budget. even though the health ministry’s overall bud-get rose only by 11 per cent, the complementarity provided by higher allocations to other health-friendly programmes made this combination a strategic move.

Water and sanitation, essential for protecting health, saw a threefold increase in allocation. nutrition programmes, which faced serious challenges due to covid-19 lockdown and restrict-ed mobility, had difficulty in delivering the benefits at angan-wadi centres and schools. heads under which funds remained untapped saw a reduced allocation this year, though it would have been preferable to maintain the thrust on combating childhood undernutrition through home delivery. Merger of pre-existing nutrition programmes has seen the birth of Poshan 2.0 in the Budget. With budgetary support for reducing air pollu-tion and improving urban public transport systems, the Budget signals support for a health-promoting environment.

The allocation to the health ministry’s programmes has been below expectations. The national health Mission saw a rise of 9.6 per cent, though the need to energise rural comprehensive

Synergy at L aSt K Srinath reddy

Government officials

consecrate a Covid-19 vaccine

consignment in Mumbai, January 15

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Synergy at L aSt t h e h o l i s t i c b u d g e t c o m b i n e s h e a lt h s y s t e m s , water, sanitation, nutrition and air Pollution

primary healthcare and awaken the slumbering urban health mission demands more resources. allocation for the Pradhan Mantri Jan arogya Yojana (PMJaY) stayed at last year’s level, since fund utilisation was low in the covid-19 period as non-covid care and claims fell sharply in hospitals. The indian council of Medical Research and Ministry of ayurveda, Yoga & naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and homoeopathy (aYUSh) fared better with larger allocations.

The covid-19 response featured strongly, through allocation

of Rs 35,000 crore for vaccines and a new centrally sponsored scheme to ramp up capacity for epidemic surveillance and con-trol. The Pradhan Mantri atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, operational over six years with a budget of Rs 64,180 crore, will strengthen disease surveillance at block, district and metropoli-tan levels and tighten screening at all monitored international entry points (air, sea and land). Public health labs in all districts and 3,382 block public health units in 11 states will strengthen pathogen and disease monitoring, while critical care units in 602

districts and 12 central institutes will enable efficient case management. The national centre for Disease control and its five regional branches will be strengthened. a national institution will be established for One health surveillance which tracks microbial migration from wildlife to veteri-nary and human populations. Further, nine biosafety level 3 laboratories would be set up, along with four regional institutes of virology.

in a happy coincidence for health, the recommendations of the 15th Finance commission also arrived to provide guidance and money for strengthening public healthcare systems at central and state levels. The commission recom-mended upgrading of both rural and urban primary health-care, providing resources (unconditional grants of Rs 70,051 crore through local bodies and Rs 4,800 crore through state-specific grants). it allocated Rs 15,265 crore for critical care hospitals. The commission, whose recommendations on

centre-state division of tax revenues apply for the next five years, asked the states to raise the share of health in their annual budgets to at least 8 per cent by 2022. The commission asked for stronger regulation of the private sector and recommended the creation of an all india Medical and health Service. it called for greater

attention to non-communicable diseases and core public health functions such as disease surveillance.

The confluent impact of the health and wellness budget and the direction provided by the Finance commission’s report create a path forward for strengthening the public health system. it enables decentralised local governance of health, provides the impetus for our journey towards a primary care-led universal health coverage and catalyses concerted action on the many determinants of health which lie outside the remit of the health ministry. n

K Srinath Reddy, a cardiologist and epidemiologist, is President, Public Health Foundation of India. He is the author of Make health

in india: Reaching a Billion Plus. Views are personal


Earlier, many of the social, economic,

environmental and commercial determinants of health lay in the policy and programme remit of other ministries. Their allocations were never

counted under the budget head of health

I l lustration by saurabh singh

15 february 202168

InvestIng In trustWhile the Budget seeks to ease last year’s pain, it Wants companies and individuals to discipline themselves too

By DhirenDra TripaThi

IOpenOmics 2021Personal Finance

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magine transferring an ‘x’ amount of rupees from your iCiCi Bank to your own state Bank of india account and seeing the tax officer count it twice in your income. Unbelievable? PD thomas, a practis-ing chartered accountant based in Delhi, has a story to tell about one of his clients having gone through this ordeal. after years of tax assessment going faceless, it is these incidents that make you wonder if many of those efforts by the government really come to anything.

“the officers are under pressure to achieve their targets to get revenues for the government. there was no concealment of income and yet a sum of rs 57 lakh was added to income which were mere cross entries between different bank accounts and a demand of rs 37 lakh was raised without any basis,” says thomas, indignant at the display of high-handedness by tax officials even as he goes on to praise the efficiency of appellate authorities and tribunals.

the officers also give very little time to reply to the notices they send, says another chartered accountant on condition of anonymity.

One can assume there will be many more such cases. finance minister nirmala sitharaman’s february 1st Budget (for april 2021 to march 2022) is an attempt at taking this very fear out of the entire tax payment exercise. the idea is to go faceless for more and more steps in the entire process, from payment and scrutiny to adjudication.

the Budget proposes to constitute a Dispute resolution Committee for small taxpayers, which will be faceless to ensure efficiency, transparency and accountability. anyone with a tax-able income up to rs 50 lakh and disputed income up to rs 10 lakh can approach the committee. the income tax appellate tribunal, the next level of appeal in income tax cases, will also go faceless.

When it comes to tax payment, it’s not over till it’s over as the file, even in simple cases, could be opened any time in six years from the end of the relevant assessment year. that limit has now been halved to three years. re-opening up to 10 years will happen only if there is evidence of undisclosed income of rs 50 lakh or more in a year. Discretion in reopening of cases has been dispensed with and will be done only if a case has been flagged by the system on the basis of data analytics, objection by the Comptroller and auditor general in such cases.

“it will go a long way in bringing down tax terrorism. tax of-ficials will have to prove to the satisfaction of the Principal Com-missioner of income tax there has been a serious case of conceal-ment and they need to go back 10 years in case of the specified

assessee. in addition, hearing only through video conferencing will make the assessment exercise under it to be fair and open,” says rashmi Deshpande, partner at law firm Khaitan & Co.

reining in mis-selling of financial products seems to be high on sitharaman’s agenda as she announced one more step to ad-dress the plight of investors. the government will now set up an investment charter for all products across the financial sector. if words are put into action, the grievance resolution mechanism for investors across asset classes is set to get strengthened.

sitharaman has provided some succour to senior citizens too, aged 75 years and above, a recognition of their health needs and hardship. they will no longer have to file their returns if the income is only from pension and interest and the tax on the same has been deducted by the bank.

the government has also expanded the scope of pre-filed tax return forms which will now include details of capital gains and interests from banks and post offices. Pre-filled forms help taxpayers file their returns smoothly and quickly.

But the finance minister hasn’t just addressed investor plight. While sitharaman has striven hard to improve com-pliance and take out the anxi-ety, she also expects citizens to be more disciplined and informed in their duties and responsibilities. to treat the incorrigibles, she takes away the loopholes.

the Budget also deftly tack-les a constituency that easily creates a brouhaha. so, after all the talk of rich tax, wealth tax and what have you that cir-culated before the Budget, the finance minister has played it a little smart instead of going in for a blanket exercise that can be counterproductive. Call them rich or well-off or high networth individuals, she has decided to tax them a little more. it’s a constituency usually supportive of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but the finance minister felt it was worth tak-ing that risk.

interest earned on more than a rs 2.5-lakh contribution in a year to an employee Provident fund or Voluntary Provident fund (ePf/VPf) will now be taxed. so far, there was no limit and no tax. this is a big development as so far all Pf contributions were eee, that is, they enjoyed an exempt-exempt-exempt status and were a popular source of savings, given that they provide a guaranteed return in excess of 8 per cent. there are very few

IThe Budget is an attempt at taking the fear of tax terrorism out of the tax payment exercise. The idea is to go faceless for more and more steps, from payment and scrutiny to adjudication

15 february 202170

eee instruments in india and this was one of them. now the middle ‘e’ is gone even as the contribution and its withdrawal remain exempted.

employee and employer contribution is as such capped at 12 per cent of the basic salary but the lure of over 8 per cent guar-anteed return has many employees contributing in excess of it. this created a loophole for high salary earners to earn a tax-free interest. in the good old days, this rate used to be in excess of 9 per cent. the cap will be applicable for contributions made from the next financial year, starting in april.

On the face of it, the move goes against small savers. But then, only high salary earners are impacted. the tax will be as per the slab the person is in.

for long, how much tax one will have to pay on a certain prod-uct has decided the choice of the instrument and not its inherent strengths. this has obviously led to a lot of wrongful market-

ing (or mis-selling as it’s popularly called) of prod-ucts and schemes, duped savers of their money and created distrust among end-consumers, compa-nies and agents.

next comes the unit-linked insurance plan (ULiP), a product that has long been mis-sold year after year. the finance minister has now brought its taxation at par with that of mutual funds by re-moving the tax arbitrage between the two. a ULiP bought henceforth and carrying an annual premi-um of over rs 2.5 lakh will now attract long-term cap-ital gains at maturity or redemption. the amount received on death will remain exempted with-

out any limit on the annual premium and customers cannot escape the provision by buying multiple policies.

the finance minister has thus introduced a taxation element in both Pf and ULiP for high income earners. Hopefully, this will end mis-selling in ULiPs and help the consumer decide on the product’s inherent merits.

“ULiPs will lose the associated tax benefits and may become less attractive for investors planning to invest over rs2.5 lakh per year. therefore, investors may now strongly consider sepa-rating investment from insurance needs in order to get better benefits from either,” says adhil shetty, chief executive officer of BankBazaar.

a key step announced, coming in the aftermath of the harass-

ment and hardship faced by depositors in the wake of the crises at Yes Bank and Punjab and maharashtra Co-operative Bank (PmC), relates to deposit insurance.

Last year, the government had approved an increase in the deposit insurance cover to rs 5 lakh from rs 1 lakh for bank customers. But this expanded window is available only when a bank goes into liquidation. the government will now enable a framework whereby customers of a bank, which is temporar-ily unable to fulfil its obligations, will still be able to get easy and timebound access to their deposit cover of rs 5 lakh.

the rs 1.5 lakh extra rebate on interest paid for affordable housing loan, beyond the rs 2 lakh limit popular with all those looking to buy a house, will be available for another year. the additional deduction will be available for affordable housing loans taken up till march 31st of 2022.

THere Was mOre positive news for the stakeholders of the real estate industry. in order to incentivise home buyers and real estate developers, the safe harbour limit

will be doubled on specified primary sale of residential units to 20 per cent. this means select properties can be registered at a price up to 20 per cent lower than the circle rate. this would be of particular help to stranded buyers of properties under construc-tion for the last many years.

the government has recognised the negative outcome of raising customs duty on gold last year. this not only raised the prices of the yellow metal in the market but also arguably led to more smuggling. it has cut basic customs duty on the pre-cious metal to 7.5 per cent from 12 per cent. While there will be a 2.5 per cent agriculture infrastructure and development cess on gold, there will be no 10 per cent social welfare charge that the agriculture cess on other goods will attract.

india is the largest importer of gold and usually imports 800-900 kg of the yellow metal every year. the country’s imports of the metal declined 47.42 per cent from a year ago to $9.28 billion during april-October 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic dampened demand.

While the fall in imports helps narrow the trade deficit, a high duty regime has often backfired with a rise in smuggling.

the steps point to a government keen on building trust with citizens and also having citizens trust each other, where the privilege of one does not allow her to benefit or the lack of knowledge puts the other at a disadvantage. it also calls upon both corporates and individuals to discipline themselves—for example, through the ULiP tax rule change.

it also recognises the pain the common man has gone through in the last year as a result of the pandemic. the ex-tension of interest rebate on affordable housing echoes that. it also aims to tap into people’s savings to fund the country’s

infrastructure. save right and spend seems to be the Budget’s gist. n

The finance minister has introduced a taxation element in both Provident Fund and unit-linked insurance plans for high income earners. Hopefully, this will end mis-selling in ULIPs and help the consumer decide on the product’s inherent merits

Dhirendra Tripathi is a Delhi-based journalist

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s Finance Minister nirmala sitharaman rightly remarked, “the preparation of this Budget was under-taken in circumstances like never before. We knew of calamities that have affected a country or a region within a country, but what we have endured with co-vid-19 through 2020 is sui generis.”

the finance minister presented the Union Budget 2021 in the midst of high expectations, with the nation having endured the pandemic unitedly so far. considering that the 2020 Budget did not bring the much needed cheer and was followed by the lockdown, all stakeholders including the Government were working with their backs to the wall. the economy which was already witnessing a lower growth was severely hit by the pandemic that ensured a deflated first half of financial year 2020-2021. the pandemic also tested the resilience of this coun-try, its people, businesses and also its startups. amid the gloom emerged many stories of glory and signs of fresh shoots that ensured the fighting spirit was still alive and we became a more digital and connected economy.

While india’s ambitious growth aspirations at becoming a $5 trillion economy had to temporarily go into a pause mode, the target is still doable if all sectors today perform, backed by a quantum leap by leveraging our startup story. Prime Minister narendra Modi, during his address at ‘Prarambh’, the start-up india international summit in January, had said that “this is the century of the digital revolution and a new-age innovation”. He had further remarked: “this century is also called the century of asia. therefore, it is the need of the hour that the technologies of the future come out of the labs of asia and the future entrepre-neurs should be prepared from our lands”.

this statesman-like focus on the future certainly encourages and benefits startups and innovative technology-based business models while unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit among the youth. the startups of today are well positioned to take india to-wards innovation, ease of living, economic growth and a connect-ed economy. such initiatives and direction have also prompted a significant shift in thinking from a nation of job seekers to one of job creators, with ambitions to take on the world.

Budget 2021 had several expectations of unleashing a slew

of reforms that would grant startups regulatory relief, ease of doing business, reduction in compliances and easier access to primary markets. startups are central to the india success story and have significantly triggered employment generation and are a major source for attracting foreign direct investment (FDi). through Budget 2021, the Government has showcased a positive intent that is evidently desirous of promoting startups and uni-corns across sectors which have induced economic dynamism by injecting innovation and spurring investment and resulted in multiple levels of impact—most of which has been crucial

Go the DistanceMore regulatory reforMs instead of stiMulus packages please

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to the idea of an atmanirbhar Bharat. ear-lier budget announcements, such as a tV channel/programme for start-ups similar to the famous Shark Tank, have to take off.

startups and unicorns have been stra-tegically looking at three major factors to make it big at a global level. this can be essentially attained by: first, introducing ways and means to create wealth in india; second, reducing/relaxing compliances and regulatory requirements to promote ease of doing business; and, third, provid-ing for innovative measures to unlock new business for emerging startups. these have a significant bearing on the story india will tell a few years down the line, especially considering that it is emerging as a huge market for consump-tion and, more importantly, for creation and innovation.

the Budget made some noteworthy announcements, such as extended tax holidays, capital gain exemptions, formation of One Person companies (OPcs), with the intent of promoting in-novation and entrepreneurship in the country. a social security

code for gig and platform workers and a fund to promote digital pay-ments are other announcements lauded by the industry at large. the clarifications about the equalisation levy will certainly help reduce the level playing field issue that many startups suffered due to the unfair advantage that existed with over-seas players not domiciled in india. that said, while these measures are welcome, they do not necessarily provide solutions to the operational challenges that currently hurt start-ups and unicorns in the online space, be it travel, hospitality, cab hailing, textiles, retail, food tech, ed-tech, lo-gistics, health-tech space and so on.

it is a well-known fact that india has emerged as the third-largest startup ecosystem in the world and is now home to 21 unicorns, valued at $73 billion. While the Govern-ment has acknowledged on several occasions the economic value these startups and unicorns are capable of generating, there is a roadblock that these startups and unicorns face while wanting to list on the Main Board of the indian stock ex-changes, thereby hindering wealth

creation in india. the Government has been working on a framework that would permit companies to list on foreign stock exchanges without prior or simultaneous listing in india. it has also introduced the innovators Growth Platform (iGP) for high growth technology companies that function on asset light models. it is abso-lutely necessary that a holistic enable-ment is granted to startups to be able to list on the Main Board of the indian stock exchanges as well as overseas.

in addition to this, there are several tax-related compliances that need recon-sideration that include but are not limited to relaxations on double taxation of em-ployee stock ownership plans (esOP) as they are critical to attracting talent and a

motivating factor for startup employees. Other tax provisions such as 194(O), 206(c) have massively blocked valuable capital for startups and unicorns in sectors such as travel, insurance, home services and others. not reconsidering such provisions will prove counter-productive to the Government’s vision of promoting digital transactions announced by the finance min-ister. notable sectors in the startup space, especially around travel and hospitality, still continue to suffer due to the above sections, Goods and services tax (Gst) duplications and compliance cost burdens. the tax rates applicable on the salaried classes continue to be high leaving little disposable income for investments, in-cluding in startups.

While travel and tourism contributed to almost 10 per cent of india’s GDP, considerable forex earnings and employment, and was considered an important sector by the prime minister on multiple occasions, this strategic sector that has multiple start-ups and self-employed people still has not got its due when it was hit the most; nor were the onerous compliances relaxed. the Government also needs to consider introduction of innovative policy measures to unlock sectors and businesses. For instance, a simple tweak like an expansion in house rent allowance (Hra) provisions to permit consideration of rented furniture/white goods for tax deductions would unlock startups in the renting/leasing space.

the finance minister rightly said that corrective measures will be taken to smoothen Gst and address the anomalies and inverted duty structures. the startup sector, by respective indus-try, is in need of regulatory reliefs more than stimulus packages and sops. an environment that is compliance-heavy cannot be supported through sops, stimulus packages and incentives. it is time to push the unicorn bandwagon with full force for it to become a living reality for india to take pride in and actualise its vision of becoming an atmanirbhar nation. n

Rameesh Kailasam is CEO, IndiaTech.org, an industry association representing Indian startups and investors

Budget 2021 has showcased the intent to promote startups and unicorns in sectors that have induced economic dynamism by injecting innovation and spurring investment

15 february 202174

he Union BUdget of 2021 pre-sented by finance Minister nirmala Sitharaman fails on the A, B, C and d of Budgets. here is how.

it fails in the areas of Agriculture, Banking, Covid and defence.

Let us examine them one by one.Agriculture virtually saved india

during the pandemic. While factories shuttered and the service sector floundered, the farmer contin-ued to toil. Crops did not fail. they were planted on time, they were irrigated on time, and they were taken care of. the farmer toiled and it was the primary sector that helped us tide over the crisis. the farmer did not fail, and neither did the agricultural marketing and mandi system. But the Union government failed.

Amidst jumlas of doubling farm income, agriculture has re-ceived an increase of only 2 per cent. how does the government ensure a 100 per cent increase in income with only a 2 per cent increase in expenditure? however, even this 2 per cent increase is not accurate on many counts.

the outlay on rural development has been reduced by 34 per cent. Yes, you heard it right. Rural development outlay has been reduced by more than one-third. Agriculture and rural develop-ment are interrelated, and the 2 per cent increase in outlay will eventually be brought down by the 34 per cent decrease in rural development funds. Moreover, the cess imposed in the Budget goes entirely into the Union government’s kitty, and the states receive nothing from this cess.

the Budget also failed the banking sector. one had hoped that due to the financial downturn, the Budget would create avenues for easier access to banking for both agriculture and Small and Medium enterprises (SMes). the banking sector required an influx of almost Rs 2 lakh crore. however, the Budget has only provided Rs 20,000 crore to the banking sector, one-tenth of what is needed. how would the SMes emerge out of recession-ary trends if they do not have access to easier banking facilities?

Covid is another area where the Union Budget has failed miserably. one had hoped that the Union government would be putting a system of pandemic preparedness in place. the ex-perience of a global pandemic has demonstrated that economies of countries that tackled the pandemic well have been the first to rebound. Contrast the US, the UK, france and italy’s perfor-

T h e A B C D o f f A i l u r eF r o m d i s e a s e t o d e F e n c e , w h y t h i s B u d g e t d o e s n o t w o r k

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mance with new Zealand, Vietnam, taiwan and thailand, and you can see the difference in eventual results. the fact that india was ranked 86th in the world on the Covid Performance index does not seem to have bothered the finance minister, who woe-fully ignored addressing the issue.

global connectivity implies that epidemics and pandemics will occur and spread rapidly as compared to previous centuries. one has to look at recent history to realise that our generation has faced multiple epidemics, be it AidS, SARS, ebola or Covid. the times will be very challenging and we need robust systems to evaluate, monitor, predict, prevent and thwart the spread of

pandemics. the Budget has failed to initi-ate any steps in this direction, and future generations will have to pay for this.

defence is another sector that re-quires urgent attention, which the Union Budget ignores. A mere 1 per cent increase has been allocated to defence at a time when the nation is facing greater threats on the eastern, northeastern and northwestern fronts. is a 1 per cent increase in the defence budget enough to tackle the combined threats posed by revisionist powers? has the Union gov-ernment forgotten the heroics of our soldiers in the galwan valley?

i spoke of A, B, C and d, and i could also talk about e, that is, education. though this sector suffered due to Co-vid, it has received a mere 5 per cent in-crease in allocation.

in Punjab, we are seriously confront-ed by all of the above challenges: Agricul-

ture, Banking, Covid and defence. the Union finance minister has failed us on all four counts.

the Budget tries to unsuccessfully court another set of A, B and C—which is Assam, Bengal and Chennai that are going to polls this year. however, the electorates of these states are smart. they will not fall for such shoddy stratagems. n

Manpreet Singh Badal is the finance minister of Punjab. Views are personal

T h e A B C D o f f A i l u r eF r o m d i s e a s e t o d e F e n c e , w h y t h i s B u d g e t d o e s n o t w o r k

The outlay on rural development has been reduced. Agriculture and rural development are interrelated. The 2 per cent increase in agriculture will be brought down by the 34 per cent decrease in rural development funds

olÁ GoaAN AllocAtioN of Rs 300 cRoRe to mARk the 60th ANNiveRsARy of the stAte’s libeRAtioN fRom the PoRtuguese is evideNce of its outsized iNflueNce

The Church of Immaculate

Conception in Panjim, Goa

OpenOmics 2021GOA At 60

By Madhavankutty Pillai

T hree hundred crore is a dot in the larger picture of the union Budget. normally the allot-ment of such a sum doesn’t find mention given that the total expenditure of the Government is around rs 30 lakh crore. The amount has been set aside to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Goa’s liberation from the Portuguese. As nirmala Sitharaman said in her speech: “Goa is celebrat-ing the diamond jubilee year of the state’s libera-

tion from Portuguese rule. From the GoI’s side, I propose a grant of 300 crores to the Government of Goa for the celebrations.” That the finance minister chose to highlight this sum is an indication of how much the state has a foothold in the national consciousness.

The Budget is also about political signals and Goa has always been high up on the BJP’s priorities because it was one of the early states it cap-tured power in. however, to put Goa in perspective, take its population size. It is under 20 lakh. That would be akin to a large suburb in Mumbai.

Photograph by Rohit Chawla

15 february 202178

dharavi, Mumbai’s biggest slum, has half of Goa’s population. In size it is one-tenth of Kerala, which itself is counted as one of the smaller states. Goa has only two members of Parliament—it doesn’t matter to the formation of national governments. Its small size or population has not been a factor in the state’s in-fluence, both in the present and in history. Much of the credit must to go to its geography, its strategic coastal location that made the Portuguese choose it as their headquarters in this part of the world.

When the Portuguese first came to India in 1497 it was Kerala that they tried to get a permanent foothold in. After a period of warfare and intrigues with the local kingdoms there, they found Goa, conquered first in 1510 from the Bijapur Sultanate, more

stable for their colonial ambitions. From here, they took control of the spice trade and expanded. By the next century, other european powers were displacing them. In Goa Travel: Being the Accounts of Travellers from the 16th to the 21st Century, an anthol-ogy edited by Manohar Shetty, there is an account by a French merchant, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, in the middle of the 17th cen-tury, that speaks of this de-cline: ‘The island abounds in corn and rice, and pro-duces numerous fruits, as mangues, ananas, figues d’Adam, and cocos (man-goes, pineapples, plantains and coconuts); but a good pippin is certainly worth more than all these fruits. All who have seen both eu-rope and Asia thoroughly

agree with me that the port of Goa, that of constantinople, and that of Toulon, are the three finest ports in both the continents. The town is very large, and its walls are built of fine stone…Beef and pork afford the ordinary food of the inhabitants of Goa. They have also fowls, but few pigeons, and although they live close to the sea fish is scarce. As for confectionery, they have many kinds, and eat a large quantity. Before the dutch had overcome the power of the Portuguese in India, nothing but magnificence and wealth was to be seen at Goa, but since these late comers have deprived them of their trade in all directions, they have lost the sources of supply of their gold and silver, and have lost much of their former splendour. on my first visit to Goa I saw people who had property yielding up to 2,000 écus of income, who on my second visit came secretly in the evening to ask alms of me

without abating anything of their pride...’And still, while their empire whittled away to nothing, Goa

remained a Portuguese colony for half a millennium, until 60 years ago they were swatted away. The only surprise was that the independent Indian government should have negotiated with Portugal for so long. When they decided to take over, it took just two days and almost no resistance. But the Portuguese influ-ence in India still remains on many fronts. Take food. Many of the things we take for granted as Indian are, in fact, Portuguese introductions. Like tomato and green chilli, the rajma of the ra-jma chaval. As an article on livehistoryindia.com says: ‘The most significant contribution of the Portuguese has been the variety of fruits and vegetables that they introduced to the Indian land. Many of the most common fruits and vegetables consumed in India today, came with the Portuguese. These include potato, tomato, tapioca, groundnuts, corn, papaya, pineapple, guava, avocado, rajma (kidney bean), cashew, chikoo, capsicum and even the chilli.’ Then there is the bread that we know as pav. Says the article: ‘According to Lizzie collingham in her book curry–A Biography, the Portuguese landed in parts of India where the locals ate rice. But they missed their crusty bread which they also needed for holy communion. They could find wheat flour in Goa but yeast was hard to come by. So they started using toddy to ferment the dough and created the pav, which derives its name from the Portuguese pao. Today the pav has transcended the boundaries of Goa to become a much loved and integral part of cuisine across the West coast, riding to fame with all-time favou-rite snacks like vada pav, pav bhaji and kheema pav.’

S Ince The dePArTure of the Portuguese, Goa broke larger into Indian culture but in an unusual place. A few decades back, if you asked teenagers, then it was stories

of Goa’s nude beaches that fascinated them. And hippies, par-ties, drugs and all the things that the rest of India turned their nose at in an age of exaggerated morals before consumerism. But even as the other India reached out to sensual experiences post-liberalisation, Goa did a retreat for both to meet somewhere in the middle. When the model-turned-runner Milind Soman ran nude on a Goa beach recently, he was promptly greeted with a po-lice case. A 2019 New York Times story on Goa looked at how the state had changed and found the rest of India barging into where Westerners had once established themselves. It said: ‘When hip-pies traveled overland from europe to India decades ago, Goa was often the final stop on the trail, welcoming to its beaches Westerners who wanted to drop out in a place where living was cheap, drugs plentiful and swimming nude the norm... But most of the original countercultural community is now gone. It has fallen victim to age, higher costs of living and the death of the hip-pie trail in the late 1970s, as wars closed the route. The final blow came, remnants of the community say, when the government started cracking down a decade ago on the informal businesses the hippies had set up to support themselves. Today, Goa’s ren-egade lifestyle attracts an entirely new type of traveler—young

since the departure of the Portuguese, goa broke larger into indian culture but in an unusual place. A few decades back, if you asked teenagers, it was stories of goa’s nude beaches that fascinated them. even as the other india reached out to sensual experiences, goa did a retreat for both to meet in the middle

OpenOmics 2021GOA At 60


Indians who are flocking here not to find themselves, as the hip-pies once did, but to celebrate their bachelorette parties or dance atop bars. As India’s economy booms and builds a middle class that barely existed two decades ago, Goa has transformed from a laid-back enclave for bohemian Westerners to a mass tourist destination for Indians.’

At present, the number of tourists who go to Goa in a year out-number the local population manifold. It is still considered an escape from real India, of afternoon naps, verdant lonely roads, somnolent villages mixed with beach markets, cheap booze and throbbing nightlife. numerous writers, artists and others in the creative field have shifted there. Many wealthy have holiday homes. The increasing influx of tourists has led to a backlash from locals. In 2018, the state’s tourism minister speaking at an event called domestic tourists “scum of the earth”. The Indian Express quoted him saying: “Today we have almost six times population of Goa coming as tourists. Those tourists are not top-end tourists, they are also the scum of the earth. Are they

responsible? They are not. If you compare Goans to rest of India, we are high in per capita income, social and political conscious-ness, we are much superior to people who are coming in. Those people, how you will control (them)? can you control them? We could control them at one point in time. But we jumped the russians…We decided to put all eggs in one basket. The British have gone away. And, now we are dependent upon the north Indians and this is what they do. They are not bothered about Goa. They want to recreate haryana in Goa.”

There is irony in this statement, as if history seems to have turned a full circle—from foreigners taking control to being driven out to the welcoming of the foreigner again to the exclu-sion of Indians. Fortunately, that is only a fringe sentiment. Goa is too integrated for politicians or parties to pull it in any other direction. When its liberation is highlighted in the Budget speech, it is also a message about Goa’s liberation being an exten-sion of the Indian freedom movement. There is no Goa separate from the idea of India now. n

Tourists on the beach

in Goa

alamy

No roads for old CarsThe volunTary scrapping policy drives fear inTo The hearTs of The counTry’s lasT padmini and ambassador owners

By Lhendup G Bhutia

By the time Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had finished reading out the Union Budget 2021-2022, it confirmed what Akshay Somwanshi had feared for over a year. When asked for his views the following day, he replied, incensed, “how can they do this?”

What had riled Somwanshi, a 25-year-old event management

professional in Pune, so much wasn’t the Government’s privati-sation push or the large fiscal deficit or some of the Budget’s other talking points. it came from a place far more personal.

the Government had come between—what some like Somwanshi believe—an individual and their beloved old car. in Somwanshi’s case, his Premier Padmini.

Sitharaman had announced, as expected, a voluntary vehicle scrapping policy. According to it, any commercial vehicle that is 15 years or older and a personal vehicle that is 20 years or older will have to undergo a fitness check at ‘automated testing cen-tres’. those that fail will presumably be forced to the scrapyard. Although the policy terms it ‘voluntary’, a series of incentives and disincentives will compel an owner to dump their old car. According to some media reports, such incentives could come in the form of a certificate that could be used to get a 5 per cent discount on a new vehicle or vehicle loans on easier terms. the disincentives could mean exorbitant re-registration fees. the details are still being worked out but are expected to be made

public two weeks later. the benefits of such a policy are easily understood. there are

an estimated 1 crore such vehicles, many of them sputtering and choking our airs. the environment will be cleaner without them on the road. there will be more fuel efficiency on the road. And the automobile sector will get a boost as people will look to replace their old cars with new ones. Road transport and high-ways minister Nitin Gadkari told the media after the Budget was tabled that this policy will push india to become the biggest automobile manufacturer in the world within five years: “[it] will boost demand, create around 35,000 jobs and take the size of the automobile industry to around Rs 6 lakh crore from the current Rs 4.5 lakh crore... New vehicles are more fuel-efficient, which in turn will [help] save on the country’s crude import bill. Besides, older vehicles pollute 10-12 times more than new vehicles. So this is a win-win policy.”

But in india, the car, even an old one, holds a special place. in the hierarchy of possessions, it usually slots itself right after the house. And there are few old cars in india that evoke as much passion as the two that were for a very long time the only ones available: the Ambassador and the Premier Padmini.

And for many who constitute the small but infinitely pas-sionate fan base of Ambassador and Padmini cars, the voluntary scrapping policy will sound the death knell for their favourite possession, already tottering on its last legs.

the owner of two Premier Padminis, Somwanshi fears it is part of a push that will eventually lead to cars such as his being forced off the road and into the scrapyard. “Some of us may be able to keep these cars at the moment by passing these fitness tests or

15 february 202180

OpenOmics 2021CAR SCRAPPAge

I l lustration by Saurabh SIngh

15 february 202182

paying hefty fees, but through such policies people like us will be discouraged from keeping these cars. And even the few Padminis that you see around right now will one day just disappear.”

the news of the policy did not come out of the blue. minis-ters such as Gadkari have been talking about such a policy for the last few years. many owners of Padminis and Ambassadors watched with trepidation when the National Green tribunal banned vehicles over 15 years from plying in Delhi a few years ago. the tribunal however made an exception for vintage cars, or those that are over 45 years old, which could be used for rallies and exhibitions and for maintenance. But the Padmini and the Ambassador, younger in comparison and which fall in the classic car category, got no such protection.

Online forums for indian automobiles this year have been abuzz with conversa-tions on the likelihood of a scrapping policy and the ways in which owners of Padminis and Ambassadors could protect their prized pos-sessions. these ranged from getting them reg-istered in the regional transport offices of smaller, less-vigilant towns and cities to re-stricting the use of the vehicle to within their house’s parking area.

mehul Kuruwa was one such worried indi-vidual. An insurance professional based in tiruppur in tamil Nadu who owns a Padmini, he worried what shape such a policy could take.

But after the details of old cars that will need fitness tests were revealed in the Budget, he believes the care he has put into his car over the years will enable him to see it through. “many of us were very anxious about what was going to happen,” he says.

Driver after driver of these two brands waxes eloquent on the efficiency of these cars and their excellent engineering, compact design and sturdiness on india’s terrible roads. Although Kuruwa uses a Nissan sedan for daily use in the city, every time he needs to go on a long drive, he takes out his Padmini, painted white with red borders. he likes to hear the thrum of the engine on long drives, he says, and to gaze at the fishtail design of its lights.

What makes these vehicles special are the stories of the peo-ple using them; their attachment to these vehicles, very often the first one they sat in or their families purchased. these aren’t

vehicles that merely carried them from one point to another. these were cars they lived with.

Kuruwa’s affection for the Padmini began when he was gifted a scale model of the car as a child. After he graduated from college in 2003, although he wasn’t very familiar with the Padmini’s en-gineering and several cars were available in the market by then, the first car he purchased was a 1986 standard Padmini. the car would break down frequently. And he remembers standing by the road with his family once, sticking his finger out for a lift, with a beat-down Padmini which had broken down once again behind him, with people laughing as they drove away. “that day i promised i was going to make my car so good that no one was ever going to laugh at me,” he says.

Kuruwa purchased another Padmini; having become so in-volved in the nitty-gritty of its engineering over the years, he has ensured his car remains as good as new. he also runs a website dedicated to the brand through which owners of such cars con-nect with one another.

IN PUNe, SOmWANShi—one of his two Padminis was passed down from his grandfather to his father to him—de-clares he will never allow someone to take his cars away from

him. “it’s part of [india’s] living heritage. We should be looking at ways for preserving it,” he says. to Somwanshi, it isn’t just that he is displeased with the new announcement. he thinks the policy will be difficult to enforce. “tracking cars that are old won’t be easy. People will just start plying them where monitoring is less strict,” he says.

Over the years, as Padminis and Ambassadors have gradu-ally disappeared from our streets—with even its taxi variants be-ing pushed off the road through court orders and more vehicle brands becoming available to drivers—the small community of its passionate lovers have come closer. there are WhatsApp and Facebook groups where they help each other source parts, pass on tips since mechanics have now become increasingly unfamiliar with these cars and share their individual stories about their cars.

“Retiring old cars isn’t going to solve the problem of air pol-lution,” says Joy Chavakkad, a thrissur-based official in Kerala’s revenue department. “it’s the extensive use of vehicles, not necessarily old ones, that is contributing to increasingly poor air quality. Retiring old cars will probably just have a small impact on air pollution.”

Chavakkad, who owns three Ambassadors, is a member of several Ambassador fan clubs in india. he organises rallies and exhibitions and considers his three vehicles as part of his family. the first of the cars he acquired from his father, who had used it to ply a taxi. he is so attached to this car and the fact that the vehicle helped his father earn a livelihood that he has even ac-quired a mobile number similar to the vehicle’s number plate. he acquired the other two over the years.

“People think these old cars have little value and should be junked,” he says. “But for some of us, our lives are connected to them.” n

as padminis and ambassadors gradually disappear from our streets, the small community of its passionate lovers have come closer. There are whatsapp and facebook groups where they help each other source parts and share tips since mechanics have now become increasingly unfamiliar with these cars

OpenOmics 2021CAR SCRAPPAge

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n

On Raghavendra RV’s desk is a folder where he files all the applications he receives from

dancers—experienced to aspir-ing—from across the world seeking to perform at the many events and festivals at his prestigious 15-year-old not-for-profit trust, Ananya. Originally a consultant at Geologi-cal and Metallurgical Laboratories, a company that he co-founded with his wife, Pramila Bai, the couple is now committed to the cause of nurturing the arts—both classical music and dance—in Bengaluru.

Raghavendra’s folder has, since Ananya’s inception, grown in size and reputation. “When we began hosting dance-based events in 2005, after ten years of showcasing music, we’d receive less than 20 applica-tions in a month; now it’s way more than 50,” he says, sipping his coffee, at his home in Malleswaram, “In fact, I have about 450-odd applicants still waiting for a chance to per-form.” More than 200 applications from amongst that pile are from Bengaluru and a bulk are in the genre of Bharatanatyam.

Praveen Kumar is wrapping up a recording for an online event, and

closing the day with a Hot Chocolate Fudge from the iconic Corner House in Shankarapuram, Basavangudi. A Bharatanatyam dancer-choreog-rapher, Praveen held a monopoly as the only Bharatanatyam teacher in his locality for nearly 12 years. He says, “In the last three years or so, in and around the street where I live, I hear there are more than a handful of teachers of Bharatanatyam.”

On January 17th, just as live performances returned, Bharatan-atyam and contemporary dancer-choreographer and actor Rukmini Vijayakumar performed Ishwara: A Journey to the Self, a production dedi-

dance

B e n g a lu ru e m e r g e s a s t h e n e w ca pita l of Bh a r ata nat ya m

Dancing in the city


cated to her father, K Vijayakumar. This 90-minute performance in the Bharatan-atyam framework, was presented at the Bangalore International Centre (BIC), a 180-seat auditorium in Domlur to a full hall, needless to say adhering to social distancing protocols.

From her parents’ home in Hebbal, Bengaluru-based dancer Keerthana Ravi enterprisingly conducted the sixth edi-tion of EVAM, a Mumbai-based festival of dance that arose after Keerthana moved cities, and that took an online avatar, cour-tesy the pandemic. Featuring a host of artists from across Delhi, London, Mum-bai and Bengaluru, the festival clocked decent sales. “I’d say 25 per cent of the

tickets purchased were by dancers from Bengaluru,” she says, quickly adding, “I’m not surprised because even though the city has plenty of performances, rasikas [connoisseurs] don’t hesitate to buy a ticket for a performance.”

For years now, Bengaluru has earned for itself many titles: the Garden City that slowly cracked the IT code becoming the hub for technology, a thriving city for start-ups, the capital of contemporary dance in India, a melting pot of cultures.

If numbers are indicators, content is proof and social media is a metric—for both quality and diversity of work—Bengaluru is fast emerging as the second capital of Bharatanatyam, after Chennai

that has always been considered its hub. “I don’t think there’s any reason to

compare Chennai and Bangalore in the context of Bharatanatyam,” defends Priyadarsini Govind, Bharatanatyam exponent, and former director of the Kalakshetra. She says, “Chennai has line-age and a sense of history, as far as this art form is concerned and that doesn’t mean one is better than the other. Bengaluru has always had a vibe of its own as far as the arts is concerned and many dancers of my generation and a few senior than me—Padmini Rao, Padmini Ramachan-dran, Kiran Subramanyam, B Bhanum-athi, Dr Lalitha Srinivasan, just to name a few—have done some phenomenal

(left) Praveen Kumar taKes a class; PrateeKsha Kashi at nitya nritya festival

By Akhila KrishnamurthyB e n g a lu ru e m e r g e s a s t h e n e w ca pita l of Bh a r ata nat ya m

Dancing in the city

15 february 202186

work in creating interest and fostering the art form.”

In Malleshwaram, an old neighbour-hood in Bengaluru, that is literally the epicentre of Bharatanatyam, where dance schools share space with arts pa-trons and auditoriums, big and small—Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Seva Sadan, Ananya, Shukra—interest has been cultivated through events and festivals that have accorded equal space for art-ists outside of the city with local talent, ensuring the co-existence of learning and performance.

Nupura, a dance institution founded by acclaimed Bharatanatyam guru, Lalitha Srinivasan, who is a specialist in the Mysore style of Bharatanatyam, having learnt it directly from K Ven-katalakshamma, has, since its inception 42 years ago, trained more than 500 students who continue to perform and teach dance across the world.

In the year of the pandemic, Nupura celebrated 35 years of Nitya Nritya, an annual festival of dance that has raised the standard in terms of curation and presentation. “We feature all forms of dance, not only Bharatanatyam, but needless to say, the latter occupies pride of place,” says Manu Srinivasan, daughter of Lalitha Srinivasan and a dancer who is col-laboratively also in charge of the festi-val with her mother who envisaged it. “To be honest, over the last few years,” she adds, “curation has been truly a challenge because of the spurt in the number of good dancers in Bengaluru, who are all raising the bar in terms of content and performance.”

Unlike a ‘sabha’ culture in Chennai where a group at the helm of an institu-tion serve as gatekeepers of the arts, Bengaluru has emerged as a new centre of Bharatanatyam thanks to dancers themselves who have donned the head sets of organisers for years, curating consciously and presenting festivals that allow for learning, aspiration and showcasing.

Amongst the leading festivals that have acquired landmark status, eight are curated by dancers. “Credit must

go to them for bringing stalwarts like Dr Padma Subrahmanyam, Alarmel Valli, Malavika Sarukkai to perform in Bangalore way back in the early ’90s, and that exposure introduced us, dancers to the idea of quality and standard in the arts,” says Praveen, a student of CV Chandrasekhar, a Bharatanatyam expo-nent based in Chennai, who has been performing regularly at the Margazhi season of music and dance in Chennai every December.

“Bangalore always had a constant thirst to learn and grow,” says Priya-darsini Govind, who travels often to conduct workshops in Bengaluru from her home in Chennai, “I remember going there when I was in my 20s with my guru, Dr Kalanidhi Narayanan for an abhinaya workshop and I remember being struck by the enthusiasm of the participants.”

Bustling with a vibrant workshop culture, the Bharatanatyam world in Bengaluru is also appreciative of many perspectives and styles that exist within its large and dynamic framework. Rama Vaidyanathan, Bharatanatyam exponent with students from across the globe, who visits Bengaluru from Delhi several times in a year—for both work-shops and performances—reiterates

that the “openness” of the dance com-munity in the city has elevated its status as a dynamic centre for Bharatanatyam in India. “It’s also very heart-warming to perform there,” Rama says, “and to always have a whole host of dancers, young and old, always in the audience and who support other dancers.”

From her home in London, young Bharatanatyam dancer-choreogra-pher, Divya Ravi, with roots in Ben-galuru, says the city provides three essentials every artist wishes for—“a safe space, an open-minded audience that can truly provide constructive feedback and a remunerative avenue”. Divya’s contribution to the dance landscape, especially during the pan-demic was significant in terms of the immersive conversations she curated with a set of dancers and the range of content she created to keep pushing the creative envelope.

What is also significant in Ben-galuru is the fact that almost all shows, small or big, are ticketed, enabling an ecosystem for the arts and the artists. “I think it is also fair to say,” Divya adds, “that Bangalore was among the first cities [in India] to begin live-cast, online ticketed performances well before the trend actually caught up in

dance

‘Performing in this c i ty is just specia l because i know the audience won’t judge me’ Rukmini Vijayakumar dancer

ruKmini vijayaKumar

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the year of the pandemic.”If marriage took artists like Divya

out of Bengaluru, others like Apoorva Jayaraman, for instance, a young Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer, who was raised in Bengaluru and who studied astrophysics at Cambridge University, made a conscious decision to move to Chennai to pursue Bharatan-atyam. Under the guidance of Priya-darsini Govind, and with a sparkling dance voice of her own, Apoorva, who is also a curator, says,“I had a remark-able amount of exposure—traditional, cross-disciplinary and contemporary work alike—even as a child, thanks to my teacher, Padmini Ravi. Owing to its nature, as a city, Bangalore gave, and continues to give, every young dancer, a personal space to flourish where no dream seems too big and you don’t ever feel afraid to experiment.”

Apoorva admits she “dared to dream big because of Bangalore. Yet, my own definition of what this big was crystal-lised in Chennai”. The arts scene in Chennai carries with it, she notes, “the gravitas of a long and deep relationship with dance and here I became cognizant of how much there is to know before one can really be ready to spread one’s wings in the world of the arts”.

Over the years, Bengaluru has also witnessed the birth of spaces, intimate and infor-

mal—Shoonya, Courtyard, Ishva, BIC—that have created possibilities for experimental work within a traditional repertoire and have served as an adda for dialogue and debate. During the pandemic, when the performance venue shifted from a proscenium stage to social media, Raghavendra watched with empathy how some dancers strug-gled to create spaces (to perform) within their homes. “Five months ago, to bridge that gap, we added a separate 150 sq ft space adjacent to the auditorium that dancers can book [free of cost] and hire a photographer to capture their dance in ways that work for the digital medium,” says Raghavendra.

Brimming with the voices of dancers who are keen to inspire a younger gen-eration to pursue the arts, as a full-time profession and committed to make it work financially, Bengaluru is also vocal about resisting the culture of paying to perform at a concert.

Equally crucial from the point of view of an artist is the audience. Rukmini Vijayakumar, who has performed at prestigious venues across the world and whose home and heart is her hometown,

Bengaluru, says that sharing work with an audience “here is just special because I know they won’t judge me. The eclec-tic nature of the city also organically manifests in an audience that sometimes walks into a performance with little or no knowledge of the dance form but filled with curiosity and an appetite to engage, without any prejudice or bias.”

Shruti Gopal, a Bharatanatyam dancer-choreographer-teacher, who runs the Upadhye School of Dance with her husband, Parshwanath Upadhye, also a well-known dancer, takes pride in Bengaluru’s Bharatanatyam culture. “We are really a world of our own,” Shruti says, “Growing up, learn-ing dance under my guru, Padmini Ramchandran, a student of Vazhuvoor Ramiah Pillai, I always watched how she consistently pushed the creative envelope within the traditional frame-work. I still remember how she created a production inspired entirely by Bengali paintings and another one on Jesus that I was also a part of. I think our—and I mean, dancers in Bengaluru—box to create and innovate has always been a bit large, a bit open, a bit without boundaries.” Perhaps, the most crucial for any artiste; a box that can breathe, free, masked or otherwise. n

‘Performing in this c i ty is just specia l because i know the audience won’t judge me’ Rukmini Vijayakumar dancer

divya ravi and sharan subramanian PerfOrm at the living rOOm Kutcheri

Photo Sumukha

15 february 202188

art

Shush No MoreArt and infographics on social

media platforms are breaking taboosBy Shikha Kumar

few months ago, doctor and educator Dr tanaya narendra was invited to do an Instagram live by a student organisation in Bangladesh. while posting about the event, the

organisers wrote that Dr Cuterus—the name narendra goes by on Instagram—was going to talk about “shush topics”. as a millennial woman whose very work on the platform centred around breaking barriers and taboos around sexual health, narendra found this upsetting. she asked her brother, “why do we have to say shush topics? why can’t we screw the shush?” and that’s how #screwtheshush was born.

Using the hashtag, narendra has done a slew of posts on her award-winning Instagram page around abortion and the right to choose, freezing your eggs, vaginal discharge, masturbation, PCos (polycystic ovarian syndrome), among others. from only a few thousand followers at the beginning of last year, she now has 1.3 lakh followers. the oxford-trained doctor finds inventive ways to impart information on sexual health—a fairy-tale love story on how periods work, a Godfather-style analogy to explain PCos.

Born to parents who are fertility experts, narenda grew up in a household where saying “vagina” was a normal, factual occurrence. “I remember I was about eight and had gone to a neighbour’s party. when asked where my mother was, I said she’s gone to operate on someone’s ovaries and was chucked out of the party,” she recollects with a laugh.

narendra’s household is an anomaly in a country where any conversation around sex is treated with squeamish-ness and internalised shame, whether that’s with parents,

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(left) Panty series by Namita SuNil; dirty laundry by Kaviya ilaNgo

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teachers or even healthcare practitioners. It’s what led Leeza mangaldas to start her sex positivity Youtube channel and Instagram page in 2017. “as a young woman navigating so many life experiences that are firsts for that age, whether it’s having an orgasm or exploring your own sexuality or body, I felt like there were no safe spaces for Indians to turn to,” she says. her Instagram bio states: Imagine a world where all sexual experiences are consensual, safe, and pleasurable.

today, her Youtube channel and Insta-gram page collectively have nearly 4 lakh subscribers, an ever-growing, curious com-munity of Indians looking to access credible information around sex, pleasure and bodily autonomy. In fact, when it comes to the latter, she’s a fierce advocate of women exercising more agency—her page has posts encourag-ing women to carry condoms, ethical porn and reviews of sex toys like vibrators. “People think a vibrator is some sort of anomalous or freaky thing. But in cultures that are sex positive, a vibrator is almost considered an essential, like a toothbrush or razor. You don’t have to be hypersexual or kinky—not that there’s anything wrong with that—to use one. People buy it because it’s a nice, empowering way to access pleasure without anyone else.”

given the unequal access to technology in the country—most studies peg female in-ternet users at less than half of male internet users—this also throws up an interesting conundrum, one that mangaldas is acutely aware of as a content creator. Because of her background as a sports presenter, she’s used to having a largely male audience. she says that men have stumbled upon her videos because they were looking for porn and the title has orgasm or sex in it. “then they stay for the sex education lesson and think ‘oh, this is cool.’ It’s important for me to take men on this journey—in an Indian context particularly, they control access to so much like technology, information and even medication. women have told me they discovered my channel through a male relative or friend. Because of the shame and stigma around these conversations it doesn’t get sufficiently addressed, but it plays a huge part in women being able to have equal rights,” says mangaldas, adding, “It isn’t just about women Ceos. financial equality needs to be accompanied by sexual and reproductive equality.”

the anonymity and sense of community that the internet offers has also led to artists pushing the boundaries on their art, often enabled by the experiences of their followers. In 2017, artist Indu harikumar started #Bodyofstories, a crowdsourced project to ‘explore and celebrate the many and varied ways of experienc-ing the human body.’ Both men and women wrote in sharing

stories of body shaming and self-acceptance, which were illustrated by her and shared on her Instagram page (@induviduality).

the idea of crowdsourcing came to harikumar after her project, #100Indiantin-dertales, inviting people to share their tinder experiences in India, went viral a few years ago. “one person wrote in to say they were ashamed of the colour of their genitalia. when I asked a question around this, I got so many responses. People said their access to any kind of genitalia was through porn, often white porn, and so they felt like something was wrong…a disconnect between what they saw and what they had,” she says.

as quarantine kicked in last year, model and illustrator namita sunil started her Panty Girl series as an exploration of the female form, inspired from her own experience as a fashion model. Using brush pen on paper, the black-and-white works were her attempt to dissect bodily autonomy and consent before the male gaze, and to reclaim space as a model without the pointed direction of a photographer.

In a more realistic twist to the #100Days trend on Instagram, mumbai-based Kaviya Ilango began the #100DaysofDirtyLaundry challenge to ‘uncover everything unholy, uncomfortable, cringe-worthy’, whether that was masturbation, complicated love, or indefinable sexuality. while one post had three different women with scars and stretch

marks on their legs, another featured a woman soaking in a bath tub while on her period, lollipop in one hand. ‘wish I didn’t have to bleed blue only for the Indian cricket team,’ read its caption.

harikumar’s other project, #Identitty, stemmed from a conversation she had with a friend, who opened up about how ashamed she felt of her heavy chest when she was younger, and all the unwanted attention that came her way. the illustrator herself had struggled with the opposite—as a skinny girl, she had felt like she had nothing to “offer”. soon enough, women, trans people and non-binary folk started sharing their stories, often accompanied with photos of their breasts, an exercise in innate trust that the artist took some time to fully comprehend.

the project brought forth fascinating, and often empower-ing, perspectives about a body part that’s been hyper sexualised in media and popular culture. while one person wrote about gender dysphoria and sex reassignment surgery, another spoke up about loving her flat chest after a double mastectomy for breast cancer—all of which were brought alive through beautiful illustrations by harikumar. whether it was #Bodyof-stories, #Identitty, or any of her subsequent projects in the years since, they achieved a common purpose—making people feel less alone. n

‘It Isn’t just about women

Ceos. FInanCIal equalIty

needs to be aCCompanIed by sexual and reproduCtIve

equalIty’ leeza mangaldas

content creator

‘people’s aCCess to any kInd oF genItalIa was

through porn, oFten whIte

porn, so there was a dIsConneCt

between what they saw and

what they had’ indu harikumar

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‘The Roles We Play Give Us a BeTTeR UndeRsTandinG of PeoPle, RealiTy and oURselves’

cinema

By Namrata Joshi

Geetanjali Kulkarni’s primary playground has been Marathi theatre. Her popularity has now been fuelled by recent online hit series

Geetanjali KulKarni

Photograph by Puneet Reddy


In the aftermath of the successful second coming of Shan-ti mishra in the popular web series Gullak 2, actor Geetanjali Kulkarni laughs about how the character has turned her into the mother

of the entire country. however, Shanti is not the classic submissive, sacrific-ing matriarch we are so used to seeing on screen. “She doesn’t shy away from expressing herself... She is always rant-ing, taunting,” says Kulkarni. In fact, when she first read the part, Kulkarni specifically asked writer nikhil Vijay why Shanti had to be so shrill, even when talking to her husband and two sons. “I was taken aback by the pro-found thing that the youngster told me—that if she wouldn’t shout, nobody would lend her an ear,” says Kulkarni, stressing on the urgency for a woman to be loud and assertive, often combative, to create a rightful space for herself in a male-dominated world.

her own personality, and the world she inhabits, might be totally at odds with that of her popular on-screen avatar but Kulkarni believes that a majority of women are caught in the same quandary as Shanti: “the roles we play often give us a better understanding of people, reality and ourselves.”

and Kulkarni has played a plethora of them, on stage and screen, for over two and a half decades now. her primary playground has been the proscenium, more so marathi theatre. Just like any other middle-class marathi household in mumbai, going to auditoriums like Shivaji mandir and Dinanath mangesh-kar natya Griha was de rigueur in her family. She grew up observing actors like Bhakti Barve, ShreeramLagoo, Datta Bhatt, nina Kulkarni, Vandana Gupte on stage. “I used to love the atmosphere, the third bell, the opening of the curtains, the smell of batata vada,

women wearing the gajras and silk saris. I used to direct plays and performed in them for the Ganapati functions in the colony,” recalls Kulkarni who grew up in a marathi cooperative society in IIt Powai. “though we lived in flats, the sentiment was of a chawl—open doors, exchanging recipes, all festivals celebrat-ed together, one tV and phone for the whole colony. It was like a Sai Paranjape film set,” she says with a laugh.

theatre was still just a hobby though she joined ruia College in mumbai because of its strong theatre culture. During the college shows she realised her own deficiencies as an actor and, after graduating in economics in 1993,

the 20-year-old joined the national School of Drama much against the wishes of her family. “nSD was about experiential learning. It was my rebirth. It completely changed my sensibilities,” she recalls. It was also where she met famous actor atul Kulkarni, her senior who later became her husband.

Initial success in theatre came through plays like CP Deshpande’s experimental comedy about man-woman relationship Buddhibal Ani Zabbu and Paresh mokashi’s Sangeet Debuchya Mulee. “that was a wonderful

phase. I performed hundreds of shows in every nook and corner of maharash-tra,” she recalls.

She credits theatre for having helped her hone her craft as an actor. “It’s an actor’s medium. It makes us feel empowered. I love spending time with a character, processing it, which theatre has taught me,” she says.

She also finds the medium more organic, in tune with the rhythm of life. “there are no second chances, no retakes. You get the opportunity to bet-ter yourself only in the next show,” she says. She loves it for what she describes as the simultaneity of birth and death; how a show is about creating—stories, characters, feelings, thoughts and ex-periences—which come to an end once the performance itself is over. “You have to start all over again, recreate the same cycle in another outing,” she says.

She compares this essential tempo-rality and temporariness to cooking a meal. You prepare a dish, it turns out well or perhaps not, you eat it and then have to cook another meal, to approxi-mate the same taste or better it. “It is for this reason that, even if I am doing very well on screen, I will always find time for theatre. It keeps me aware as an actor,” she says.

Kulkarni caught the connoisseur’s eye with Piya Behrupiya, atul Kumar’s rambunctious hindi stage adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night which she has been doing now for eight years and, later in cinema with Chaitanya tamhane’s biting satire on the legal sys-tem Court where she played the public prosecutor in the trial of a protest singer. But the popularity with the public at large has been fuelled only recently with series like Gullak, and Taj Mahal 1989 about different shades of love in pre-Internet Lucknow and rohena Gera’s debut feature Sir where she played

‘The Roles We Play Give Us a BeTTeR UndeRsTandinG of PeoPle, RealiTy and oURselves’Geetanjali Kulkarni’s primary playground has been Marathi theatre. Her popularity has now been fuelled by recent online hit series

TheRe aRe no second chances, no ReTakes in TheaTRe. yoU GeT The oPPoRTUniTy To BeTTeR yoURself only in The nexT shoW”Geetanjali Kulkarni actor

15 february 202192

Laxmi, a fellow maid and confidante of the lead ratna (tillotama Shome).

according to her, unlike films, tV and streaming platforms, theatre has a committed but limited audience.“my work has reached the masses in dif-ferent parts of India through the Ott platforms,” she says. She did try for films after graduating from nSD but could not find what she was looking for. Commercial cinema was not exciting enough, parallel cinema had plateaued out. But now there is a new burst of energy which is feeding her hunger for good roles.

Far frOm BeInG CYnICaL or bitter, Kulkarni is happy that popularity has come to her late in

life, in her forties, when she has become more comfortable with herself, both as an actor and as a person. “I can do a small role in Sir with as much love as the lead in Taj Mahal and Gullak. ten years back I may have been insecure but now I know that I can create work for myself. I am not competing with anyone. I love competing with myself,” she says. for her what matters is whether she is constantly growing and evolving as an actor and as an individual. “my scripts and assignments should empower me as a person. the length of my role doesn’t matter. the story has to have value in my life. It’s even better if it also has value for the society and the world,” she says.

It has been the reason why she picked up relatively small roles in Sir, Shubhashish Bhutiani’s Mukti Bhawan and ritesh Batra’s Photograph. they gave her the opportunity to work with film-makers with a unique aesthetic sense and vision and their own distinct way of telling the story. “I would have been foolish to not have done them,” she says.

her characters so far have been rooted in the real. She attributes it to the independent, experimental, arthouse cinema that she has been associated with. She calls it her comfort zone. Opportunities to play “mother of arjun rampal” had been either consciously

rejected or, fortuitously, those commer-cial projects never took off.

the innings in marathi theatre, however, has been peppered with some commercial blockbusters. Like Paresh mokashi’s Mukkam Post Bombilwadi and Lagna Kallol of which she did over 500 shows each. She attributes the success to mokashi’s unique sensibility and sense of humour that she couldn’t find in other commercial ventures. “as a child I always wanted to be part of marathi commercial theatre but found that I wouldn’t have sustained in it for long,” she says. She then veered towards experimental theatre. She produced her own plays, a landmark one on breast cancer called Ek Rikami Baju (an empty Side). She did the iconic Sex Morality and Censorship with Sunil Shanbag, Haath Ka Aaya… Shunya with manav Kaul and Gajab Kahani with mohit takalkar which she continued to perform in, until the lockdown halted it.

at this juncture though, she would not mind trying a hand at a main-stream film that is set in a fantastical space, irrespective of whether she is successful at the attempt or not. “as an actor you have to constantly experi-ment with yourself. It’s only then that you realise what’s your own path, the kind of stories you want to tell. You have to get out of the comfort zone to under-stand yourself,” she says.

She likes to step out of her comfort zone in life too, trying to make theatre socially relevant. from 2016-2019 she worked on a project called Goshtarang where five actors from maharashtra were picked up and trained for a fel-lowship programme to perform over 100 shows for underprivileged, tribal and rural children in 50 schools. It was all about strengthening theatre and literacy at the grassroots.

till 2019, apart from her other com-mitments, she had been working with children on theatre, music and other art forms in her village in Wada taluka (100km from mumbai) in association with the nGO Quest (Quality educa-tion Support trust). “It’s not just social work. It’s something I get a lot of energy and education from. Children give you fresh ideas. also, theatre is empower-ing, and I like to share that experience with people. It gives me a lot of joy to help people find their own modes of expression, irrespective of what field they are in,” she says.

Life is split for now between a small flat in Goregaon east that she calls her ‘transit home’, and a huge house in the village where they have “put in their heart and soul” and where they like to escape to at the smallest opportunity.

for now, there is lots coming up on the work front. her new marathi film, mangesh Joshi’s Karkhanisanchi Waari (ashes on a road trip) premiered last week at the International film festival of India in Goa. a Kannada series titled Humble Politician, has her playing a hindi-speaking politician. She had done a cameo in a DICe media produc-tion, Operation MBBS; the role of the dean of a medical college that has become a bigger part in the second season. the shoot for the second season of Aarya begins in march.

What is yet to happen is a project in which the talented couple—atul and Geetanjali—gets to work together. there was one script by mukti Krish-nan which the two were excited about, but it didn’t find a producer. “We are very independent people,” says Kulkar-ni, “We’d do it, if it comes organically but we are not into pushing projects.” She only pushes the limits of herself as an actor. n

cinema

Geetanjali KulKarni in gullak (left) and taj mahal 1989

15 february 202194

books

‘Hours before Jara the hunter killed the much beloved eighth avatar of our

Lord who was seated under that leprous tree of enlightenment, he found himself awash in a wave of mel-ancholy that crashed in as he dreamed of making love to his wife who, even in that ephemera between deep sleep and wakefulness, straddled over him, as she usually did, with the purposefulness of a good samaritan trying to resuscitate a drowned man.’

If you make it past this opening sentence into Keerthik sasidharan’s re-visioned Mahabharata, you will, indeed, find yourself in a forest. The Dharma Forest, lit by a sun-filtered sincerity and fed by both writerly ambi-tion and imagination, is dense with words and ideas whose lush and fertile undergrowth reaches deep into an an-cient text to find truth and some kind of transcendental meaning for the 21st century individual.

sasidharan plans to write a trilogy that experiences the Mahabharata through the lives and deeds of different characters and this first volume explores bhishma, Draupadi and arjuna. sasidharan sets an interest-ing frame for the story that he wants to tell. The book opens with Krishna, who has just been shot in the foot by the hunter Jara. as he lies bleed-ing, occupying the twilight state between life and what comes after, Krishna, avatar of the great god Vishnu, asks perhaps the most critical question of all—what does it mean to be human? It is Jara

who answers the question by narrating the lives of two great warriors and one angry woman. and we, as readers, listen along with Krishna and are afforded an-other view of the events that we already know, a view now coloured by a search for what might make these characters like you and me.

This is a great setup—a dying god, who has just spent his life in the world of men, asking the most fundamental of all questions and being given a series of answers by a truly minor player in the great game that he, god, has just unfurled for the benefit of all beings. Krishna has lived his life as a god, performing miracles and subverting the natural order of things. rama, on the other hand, has lived through his avatar largely as a man and says to the gods at the end of war, ‘I always thought I was human, that I was rama, the son of Dasharatha. Tell me who

I am. Where did I come from? Why am I here?’ Whichever be the answer that the avatar seeks, be it knowledge of the divine condition or the human one, the conundrum of the man-god is compelling.

since neither text in itself answers these questions, it falls upon later com-mentators and re-tellers of the story to carry this theological and existential burden forward and to respond from within their own time and place. sasidharan does this, as have countless others. I believe that those of us who know the Mahabharata well will find that sasidharan’s valiant attempt to ad-dress the question that he himself raises falls short. There is little here about the characters and enhanced situations that I have not read elsewhere or thought before. but it could well be that I simply missed the dharma forest for the trees.

However, I have little doubt that a vast and hungry public which seeks to valorise a mythic past as history via ‘real’-ised characters will be enthralled by sasidharan’s narratives. This growing readership discovers classical texts almost exclusively through their modern retell-ings which are inflected with both commentary and inter-pretation by their authors. It’s good to remember, though, that every retelling is neces-sarily incomplete in terms of the original text. and so, we should all read as many of them as we can as we strive to reach an approximate understanding of how our ancestors wrote about being in the world. n

Forest of Ideas Keerthik Sasidharan reimagines the Mahabharata to find meaning for the 21st century readerBy Arshia Sattar


Keerthik Sasidharan

The Dharma ForesT Keerthik Sasidharan

Penguin400 Pages | Rs 499

www.openthemagazine.com 9515 february 2021

If IT Were possible, I would have sat on the steps of Mumbai’s Colaba Causeway and wept. or at least tried to during the opening

chapters of feisal alkazi’s richly evoca-tive era of Mumbai’s english theatre world. He documents the collective passion of the two families—the alkazis and Padamsees—to which he belongs and the two great cities Mumbai and New Delhi that formed the backdrop to their theatrical journeys.

There is a whiff of Midnight’s Children in the tumult of his maternal grandmother Kulsumbai’s home at Kulsum Terrace on Colaba Causeway. an affluent family of Khoja Muslims from Gujarat, the Padamsees were at the

intersection of conflict-ing cultures. Kulsumbai made sure that her ever-increasing brood received the best of an anglicised education even as she held them together with her gargan-tuan sunday lunches.

Many decades later it was here that I watched a production of alyque Padamsee’s staging of Harold Pinter’s The Birth-day Party. Two rows of seats were positioned at the far end of the room. The actors were up close and neurotically engaged with Pinter’s entanglements. It was difficult not to feel suf-focated. Theatre was not entertainment. It was visceral. It had to grab you by the throat and

grind you into the depths where you might glimpse alternate visions of who you might be, or even could be.

“are you God, as many people sug-gest?” I asked alyque Padamsee during an interview for Debonair. He was at the height of his career as an advertising maverick as well as the most imperative of theatre directors of the time produc-ing musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar and Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq, a play fraught with allusions to the dangers of an authoritarian state. He fixed me with a Jinnah level glare, clamped his mouth and did not answer. Gods don’t need to.

There are many deities that parade through the pages of alkazi’s memoir. The two that stand out are alyque Pad-

amsee and his brother-in-law, ebrahim alkazi. feisal alkazi introduces his fa-ther’s family as baghdadi arabs who had settled down in Pune. ebrahim is just 18 when he meets the most charismatic of the Padamsees, sultan—or bobby as he was known at st Xavier’s College in Mumbai—during an amateur produc-tion of oscar Wilde’s Salome. When the young Parsi actress refuses to perform the erotic Dance of the Seven Veils, bobby gets his sister roshen to take her place. feisal adds: ‘That’s how my parents met.’

The second part of the saga takes place in Delhi where ebrahim alkazi becomes the mediating force at the National school of Drama in Delhi. The focus also changes to plays in Hindi and those translated from the regional. If alyque was the consummate showman, alkazi senior was a shaman. He transformed the scripts and the young actors by a rigour that combined the different acting methods as also the need to create a language for a society still struggling from a fractured past. Whether in the intimate environs of the Triveni Kala sangam auditorium, or the art Heritage gallery run by roshen, the space for discussion and dissent was always open.

feisal’s text flits between revelations of old family secrets, short resumes of both the dramas and divas who glittered onstage and his own trajectory as actor and director. He also pays a tribute to saf-dar Hashmi. earlier on in Mumbai, Pearl Padamsee had directed The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, an indictment of how we the people create our leaders. Then again, feisal reproduces a haiku by his mother abandoned by her husband. The solitary bird/Sings. feisal has a whole aviary behind him. every page sings. n

The Showman and the ShamanA family memoir chronicling the deities of Indian theatre By Geeta Doctor

enTer sTage righTThe AlkAzi / PAdAmsee FAmily

memoirFeisal Alkazi

Speaking Tiger254 Pages | Rs 699

Ebrahim Alkazi as Macbeth, 1956

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The literature around Covid-19—Covid-lit, as i prefer to call it—has been steadily gaining

traction, readership and popularity. it spans the gamut—from Coronavirus: A Book for Children by elizabeth Jenner, Kate Wilson et al to Till We Win: India’s Fight Against the Covid-19 Pandemic, co-authored by dr randeep Guleria, direc-tor, aiiMS, new delhi, dr Chandrakant lahariya and dr Gagandeep Kang.

and when journalists gate-crash the party, sparks are bound to fly. Sonali acharjee, veteran journalist who has worked with a number of publications, including this magazine, and who currently covers health for India Today, jumps into the fray with Life Behind Masks.

a collection of twenty-one stories grouped around three themes—love, loss and duty—it is a topical and entertaining read. as acharjee says in her introduction, she attempts to distil people’s ‘loss, dreams, confusion and memories’. in this she succeeds. largely.

it is interesting to deconstruct the book to examine the arsenal of tech-niques and strategies employed by the author to grab the eyeballs of what ap-pears to be her chief audience—millen-nials. right off the bat, she uses intrigu-ing chapter headings to evoke curiosity. Sample these—‘he is My Father’, ‘a Girl and her Screwdriver’ and my personal favourite—‘Would You

like an apple?’—about a millionaire reduced to selling fruit to survive the challenge of the disease.

acharjee’s second device is to keep her stories short and crisp, to cater to the short attention-span of today’s reader. the prose is precise and direct and none of the pieces exceed a dozen pages. each story is self-contained—which makes the book an ideal one to read on-the-fly.

thirdly, acharjee wisely chooses to use Covid-19 only as a peg to hang her stories on. this avoids monotony and repetition. the range of issues tackled by her are diverse and pertinent—from menstrual hygiene to neo-natal mortali-ty, to attacks on health workers and how to sensitise children to the pandemic. there is also a poignant pen-picture of a young Muslim girl caught in the unfor-giving east delhi riots of recent memory

(‘the Pages of My Quran’). the challenge of vaccine development is seamlessly woven into another narrative, namely, ‘a dose of Covaxin’.

next, Sonali seems to be on a mission to educate the reader. nothing preachy, just bite-sized bits of medical informa-tion, be it about cytokine storms or silent hypoxia. the author makes the virus that much easier to understand.

Finally, the sheer variety acharjee showcases is nothing short of mind-bog-gling. apart from life-experiences this extends to demographics (eight years to ninety-eight), geographies (Shillong to Palakkad), and classes (nurse to millionaires).

in essence, the theme of acharjee’s book is hope in times of terror, ignorance and depression. Many of the stories celebrate the resilience of the human spirit in the face of the pandemic.

Shortcomings? hardly any. the proof-reading, however, could have been sharper. More pertinently, some of the stories do not work. obviously, each reader will have her personal favourites. But, for me, the weak links were ‘a Journey through My Journal’ and ‘Me against the Media’. Surprising, since both dealt with the author’s home-turf! But these are minor niggles. acharjee deserves kudos for adding to our knowl-edge of the disease in an interesting way, through heartfelt stories. a classic example of edutainment. n

Loss and Hope Celebrating the resilience of the human spirit in the face of the pandemicBy Lov Verma

ap

Life behind Masks: The Many ShadeS of hope

in The TiMeS of Covid Sonali Acharjee

Hay House248 Pages | Rs 399

books

A health worker at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, June 2020

openthemagazinewww.openthemagazine.com

Tell us why you read Open

The beauty of the written word; a story well told.The luxury of immersing myself in myriad lives; journeying to faraway lands.I am obsessed. And the Reviews in Open help me discover the best.A quiet corner. An interesting book. Life’s good!

Sanjay Malik, Dubai

98

➲ Atmanirbhar HeroesOver the next two years India will be flooded with mythological heroes. The Indian film industry has decided to go back in time to look for heroes and even anti-heroes. Storytelling will be a mixture of great narratives and sharp special effects as an array of atmanirbhar (self-reliant) superheroes descend on the big screen. Nitesh Tiwari is working on a retelling of the Ramayana for the big screen; Aditya Dhar, who wowed the establishment with Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), will tell the tragic story of Drona’s son, Ashwathama, played by Vicky Kaushal. Rana Daggubati, a fanboy of the Star Wars franchise and Amar Chitra Katha comics, will be playing Hiranyakashyap, whose story he heard as a child. Both Ashwathama and Hiranyakashyap believed they were immortal, which anyone who has read our epics knows is an invitation to a very public humiliation. Prabhas plays Ram and Saif Ali Khan plays Raavan in Om Raut’s Adipurush. Deepika Padukone is developing her dream of playing Draupadi. Is this a copycat phenomenon? Or is there a deeper search for meaning here which ends reliance on remakes of past movies and rip-offs of foreign films? Mirroring the flourishing genre of Indian epic fiction in literature, the film industry hopes to bring to the big screen these made-in-India offerings.

➲ Pathan Meets TigerYash Raj Films, which has had a miserable two years with only War (2019) clicking at the box office, has decided to expand what was meant to

be a cameo by Salman Khan in Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathan. Salman will play Tiger and appear towards the end of the Siddharth Anand-directed movie. Salman will then go straight into playing Tiger once again in the third edition of his spy franchise, this time to be directed by Maneesh Sharma, a favourite of Aditya Chopra. Salman returns to the cleanshaven Tiger of the first film even as his mission predictably takes him across half the world. What we are seeing is the birth of a new hyphenated franchise, Pathan-Tiger, if the Shah Rukh film succeeds, which will probably be on the lines of Rohit Shetty’s ever-growing cop universe.

➲ Back to MagadhWriter and director Neeraj Pandey will be paying homage to his native Bihar in an ambitious film he is working on, starring Ajay Devgn as Chanakya. After much research on ancient Magadh, Pandey has finalised the script and will start casting for the young Chandragupta Maurya whom Chanakya mentored. Pandey who created The Special Ops series for Disney+ Hotstar, under the FridayStorytellers banner, is now working on the backstory of his lead character Himmat Singh, played by Kay Kay Menon. The Special Ops took off from the 2001 attack on Parliament, so expect the special edition to go further back. It is clearly all about creating a web of narratives which can lend themselves to individual spin-offs. Pandey pioneered this in Naam Shabana (2017) when he co-produced the new vehicle for Taapsee Pannu, spinning off from her seven-minute

long apperance in Baby (2015).

➲ Tata TakhtNews that Karan Johar is directing Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt in a love story indicates the end of his ambitious but ill-fated Takht. The movie which was going to delve into the relationship between Aurangzeb (Vicky Kaushal) and Dara Shikoh (Ranveer Singh) was expected to cost Rs 250 crore. After the failure of the big-budget Kalank (2019), it was always going to be difficult for Dharma Productions to sustain Takht but the Covid-19 lockdown first ensured cancellation of the shoot in Florence, Italy and then the postponement of production on sets in Mumbai. He has promised an “epic series” as part of the “Change Within” initiative to contribute to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “nation-building narratives” to celebrate 75 years of Independence. Perhaps the Mughals do not epitomise the “values, valour and culture” of India Johar tweeted about, tagging the prime minister.

➲ Did You Know?Former collegemates Aravind Adiga and Ramin Bahrani have proved to be a successful combination for Netflix. After The White Tiger, they will adapt Adiga’s novel Amnesty, about immigrants in Australia. Bahrani’s old friend Ashok Amritraj, one of the first Indians to set up shop as a producer in Hollywood, will join them as producer. A former tennis player and brother of ace Vijay, he co-produced Bahrani’s 99 Homes (2015) about the 2008 US recession. n

15 february 2021

STARGAZERKaveree Bamzai

AliA BhAtt RAnveeR SinghKARAn JohAR

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