The hole that the UPA dug India into

Caught in a storm without an umbrella

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

Mint makes a very important point in today’s editorial:

We have often said in these columns that the UPA government made a cardinal mistake during its term: buoyant tax revenues should have been used to fix the fiscal problem. The money that flowed into the kitty was frittered away, even as the promise to restructure government spending was not followed up on. India is in a fiscal mess at precisely the point when it needs fiscal muscle to support weakening demand. The blame for this has to be laid squarely at the door of the Manmohan Singh government.

The overall tone of ministerial statements is one of innocent helplessness: The domestic slowdown is because of the global economic crisis. That is technically correct. But then the domestic acceleration, too, was partly because of the global boom between 2003 and 2007. The UPA government can’t have it both ways: claiming credit in good times and blaming others during bad times.[Mint]

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