This is Part I of two-part article revisiting critical economic decisions that eventually led to minus 23.9% growth in Q1 of FY21. Blaming exogenous factors (pandemic) or intense lockdown is merely an excuse to divert attention from government's ineptitude and thwart meaningful debate

During a crucial board meeting on November 19, 2018, the RBI decided to appoint a committee to decide on an appropriate size of reserves that the central bank should maintain and the dividend it should give to the government

Changes in RBI mandate, new infra financing models and rules for new-age banks can rev up the banking engines

The traditional approach of pumping money into banks to push liquidity to corporates and NBFCs is not working. It's time to change the strategy

UNCTAD believes that India and China are among the few world economies least likely to fall into recession. But don't be surprised if it chooses to revise India outlook

P. Chidambaram, Meghnad Desai, Bimal Jalan, D. Subbarao, and Junaid Ahmad on how to get the GDP going

What the centres package to combat corona crisis will do to India's already struggling economy

To keep inflation under specified level, the government in 2016 had decided to set up Monetary Policy Committee headed by RBI Governor entrusted with the task of fixing the benchmark policy rate

The fresh call comes just months after the RBI approved a Rs 1,76,000 crore dividend payment to the federal government, including Rs 1,48,000 crore for the current fiscal year

NITI Aayog is working on a real-time dashboard for all ministries, especially infrastructure ministries, to evaluate the performance of every scheme under each ministry, says Rajiv Kumar

The government has come under tremendous pressure to meet its fiscal target due to a falling revenue collection and a series of measures taken in the last month to reinvigorate the sagging economy

Senior Finance Ministry officials met heads CPSEs and financial advisors of infrastructure ministries to devise measure to push capital expenditure, so as to pump liquidity and boost demand

While a section of the market believes the government should slash GST rates on cars from 28% to 18% to revive demand, underwhelming monthly GST collection figures are of little comfort to the government

On whether the RBI surplus transfer would help the government compensate for shortfall in tax revenues, Kumar said that efforts would be to raise non-tax revenue through disinvestment and asset monetisation

Big win as Jalan panel says revaluation reserves cannot be touched

The Centre's as well as the states' liabilities are rising at an alarming rate

Government will try to raise non-tax revenue through disinvestment and asset monetisation, said Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar.

'Personally, this is grossly inadequate, the RBI is sitting on a large amount of unproductive capital which it is not using, it is lying in the reserves of foreign banks and giving us barely any returns,' said Goyal

Of the Rs 1.76 lakh crore surplus transfer the government has already accounted for in the budget Rs 90,000 crore as surplus transfer from RBI and another Rs 28,000 crore has already been paid as interim dividend to the government in 2018-19

The government cannot stop or slow down spending - the economy is already losing steam with exports, private consumption and private sector investment slowing down