Hi Everyone,
I reviewed Budget speeches over the last seven decades. It was a revelation: Despite structural breaks, regime changes—with rival political parties at the helm—and ideological flip flops, we have witnessed broad policy continuity with change.
Beginning today, I will present a cheat sheet on the economic history of modern India through the prism of the Union Budget.
The captions set the tone, the background note the context and the quotes of the then Finance Minister talk-up the claim.
It is an unusually long thread--will therefore roll it out in parts--and hence will counsel patience.
#UnionBudget2025 @HaseebDrabu 1.    1956-57: The Commanding Heights
FM: C D Deshmukh
PM: Jawaharlal Nehru

“The present Budget relates to the first year of the Second Five Year Plan, which will during this Session be submitted to the Parliament for approval.”

(Background: The Second Plan, dubbed the Feldman-Mahalanobis model and steeped in socialism, copied from the Soviet Union planning exercise, focused on creating capital goods capacity in the economy through the vehicle of the public sector. They were supposed to be the commanding heights of the Indian economy.)

“The Second Five Year Plan is a bolder step forward in the direction of developing the economy. It involves an increase in the rate of investment from the present level of about 7% of the national income to something like 12%.This order of effort is feasible only if the necessary restraint in the matter of consumption is forthcoming on the part of all sections of the community, each according to its capacity.With a rising national income keeping ahead of the growth in population there need be no question of a reduction in the existing average living standard. This must rise. That is the very object of planning.Nevertheless, there is in the short term a choice between an increase in consumption and an increase in investment which would bring in larger returns in the future. To the extent that a plan succeeds in drawing upon unutilised resources, it makes possible a simultaneous increase in the production of investment goods as well as consumption goods. It is not necessary, therefore, in an underdeveloped economy to regard an all-round reduction in consumption as a condition precedent to an increase in investment, although it is possible that the current consumption standards of the more fortunate sections of the community will be unfavourably affected. There is, all the same, need for relative restraint, difficult as this is in a country which starts with exceedingly low levels of consumption. And fiscal policy must be, geared to this objective.Whatever the rise in money incomes, the community’s expenditure on consumption must be limited to the level which buys off currently available supplies of consumer goods at constant prices.”

Hi Everyone,
It is Thursday and time for a new episode of #CapitalCalculus on @StratNewsGlobal
This time it is a conversation with @AnandaramSanjay on how India's public digital infrastructure is the country's latest calling card in soft power Traditionally India’s soft power has been defined around Yoga, Cuisine, Bollywood and Art.
In the last 10 years India’s has acquired a new calling card: its home grown software applications for public good.