High fiscal deficits raise inflation which hits the lowest income and salaried classes.
As for structural reform, there are signs if one looks hard enough.
The fiscal deficit for 2015-16 may eventually come down to the targeted level of 3.9 per cent of GDP.
There are conflicting signs on India's investment cycle.
'Imran Khan hopes to fulfill the dreams of the founders of of Pakistan in establishing an Islamic Welfare State.' 'The grave situation of the economy makes realisation of this dream very difficult,' points out Colonel R N Ghosh Dastidar (retd).
A simple guide to the strange defensiveness of the government and its supporters, and how and why the arguments they're making are wrong.
India's macroeconomic situation has benefited from oil prices' decline.
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The toxic brew of fiscal populism, crony capitalism and bad economic management has ensured the collapse of economic growth, industrial stagnation, stubbornly high consumer inflation, declining savings and investment, shrinking employment opportunities, and a dangerously vulnerable external financing situation.
The idea of strategic disinvestment seems to have been dropped by the government.
Loan waivers will never be enough. Reforming the agricultural marketing system is essential to addressing the concerns of farmers in a sustainable manner, says Nitin Desai.
The Indian stock markets may turn bearish after the US Fed decides to raise interest rates.
It could also clear stalled projects and review various subsidies on the energy, food and fertiliser fronts.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday presented the Union Budget for 2016-17.
The passage of the Bankruptcy Code could set the stage for other important legislation that may see India undergo more economic change than all governments combined since the reforms implemented by P V Narasimha Rao in 1991-93, says Ben Merton.
India's fiscal deficit trends are a bit like an alcoholic trying, unsuccessfully, to reform. Virtue does not last for too long, says Shankar Acharya.
Markets surged on hopes that the exit polls would show that the BJP winning majority in the general elections.
With Narendra Modi about to make his first Independence Day speech, there is a buzz in Delhi that Modi will make some big announcements to signal major reforms and directional shifts. But we have to wait and see if it happens, says Mohan Guruswamy.
At 15.05 PM, the 30-share Sensex was up 281 points at 28,238 and the 50-share Nifty gained 86 points at 8,577
From dating apps to events, the shrinking community is innovating ways to encourage the young to marry within the faith.
The success of the government will depend substantially on the quality of its team of key ministers, officials and advisors
Modi government has to come up with a robust economic agenda to impress the masses.
A delayed monsoon and abundant cotton in the international market could spell trouble in the state's suicide zone.
Pushback to Modi govt's policy pronouncements has already started, it now has a very small window of opportunity to bring in reforms.
Are we adopting an idea whose time has come and gone? My feeling is, yes, says ex-banker C Joseph Chacko in the fourth article of the series on inflation targeting.
Modi is as divorced from reality as Manmohan Singh. He might want to sound expansive and visionary, but to be credible he must have his feet on the ground and know the reality around him. Instead of delivering irrelevant homilies to small and hence poor farmers, the prime minister should be thinking in terms of creating a huge demand for alternative employment, mainly in the construction sector, and his promised hundred new cities is a capital idea, says Mohan Guruswamy.
'There is no change in the overall story of economic recovery.'
'Rahul Gandhi accuses the Modi government of being in thrall to corporate fat cats at the expense of farmers and other common folk. But the facts do not bear out this argument, as Indian farmers are relatively better off compared to the really wretched of the earth, the unfortunate landless, often itinerant, labourer. And since Rahul's ancestors are the ones who failed them, it is a little disingenuous of him to ignore them in his rhetorical flourishes,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.
In Muthuvel Karunanidhi's passing, Tamil Nadu has lost the last of its Titans.
The BJP government is no better than the Congress -- as wretched and anti-people. In addition, it is explicitly and aggressively communal, says Venkatesh B Athreya, in a hard-hitting interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com.
'It is a national shame that the only country that enacted a food security act is now better known as the land of farmer suicides. Indian farming can change only if national irrigation policy is implemented in totality,' Dr M S Swaminathan tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Deepak Parekh, chairman of Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC), India's largest mortgage lender, says the exuberance in industry about the new government is justified but big ideas articulated by the prime minister need speedy implementation.
BJP President Amit Shah -- arguably the second most powerful politician in the nation -- granted a rare television interview to the Network 18 group of news channels. Rediff.com's Rajesh Alva checks out what the BJP boss said in this word cloud assessment of the interview.
