With the short-term, frenzied interest that accompanies annual budget presentations in India having ended, it is time to raise issues that were largely ignored in the debate.

There is massive unemployment in the country that especially afflicts the youth; there is a huge and persistent inflation in food prices; there is acute and unprecedented rural distress; there is a crisis in the petty production sector; and income and wealth inequality has reached levels where the whole world is talking about it.

The mismatch between the problem at hand and what the Budget offers is stark be it welfare or even taking care of key political allies.

If we ignore the hype that accompanies and follows the presentation of the Centre's annual budget, there are principally two strands in it that have attracted attention.

The most outstanding feature of the Indian economy today is the sluggish increase in real consumption expenditure. Between 2019-20 and 2022-23 for instance the per capita real consumption expenditure has grown by less than 5 per cent which is less than the rate of growth of the gross domestic product.

We all know that the Narendra Modi government has strong centralising tendencies — not just between the Centre and the state governments but even within Central ministries, with the Prime Minister's Office and the ministry of home affairs being the loci of real power.

It seems that the Narendra Modi government has decided, in an election year, that general elections can be fought and won without efforts to improve the material conditions of the bulk of the people, and even simply ignoring their suffering.

This was never going to be an easy Union Budget to present for any Finance Minister to present, even before last week. Despite all the hype about a resurgent Indian economy, almost all the indicators that matter suggested that economic conditions were far from positive.

The budgetary exercise cannot be meaningful unless it addresses the primary concerns in an economy.

Denials and rejections, of the most pressing issue in the Indian economy today – which is providing employment as minimum livelihood options for the majority, needs to be underscored in the current budget.

The centre-pieces of the 2021-22 budget and the projected budget for 2022-23 fiscal years is the claim by the Finance Minister to have increased capital expenditure sharply in order to strengthen infrastructure in seven areas (Roads, Railways, Airports, Ports, Mass Transport, Waterways, and Logistics Infrastructure).

No budget has been presented in recent memory at a time when the economy is in such dire straits: unemployment is so high that there are job riots; wealth and income disparities are among the worst in the world; millions more have been pushed into poverty as a result of the pandemic and lockdown; and inflation is accelerating even in the face of massive unemployment.

The Indian economy is currently mired in a vicious cycle of inflation, stagnation, and budget deficit expansion. And this spiral is projected to worsen with adverse changes in the global economy.

The budget provides for no real increase in government expenditure; on the contrary it provides for a real contraction in total central government expenditure. This is a conservative budget, the very opposite of what was needed and it does not allow for a V-shaped recovery in the Indian economy.

The Budget 2021 was expected to go beyond the nitty-gritty of budget numbers and provide a robust path for recovery, but the government has failed to deliver what was promised through the main budget and subsequent mini-budgets, even estimates for next year point to missed opportunities to use fiscal measures to revive the ailing economy.

Budget 2021 suggests that the government imparted massive fiscal stimulus to the Indian economy during the Covid year and is now moderating the stimulus as the economy 'recovers'. However, the truth is entirely different; this moderation is a retreat from a stimulus that was never given.

The Budget 2021 seems to carry forward the fiscal conservatism witnessed during 2020-21. The government is set to wind down even the limited support it afforded to those hit hard by the pandemic, while maintaining a lenient tax regime that favours private capital and restraining debt-financed spending.

India remains one of the most unequal societies in the world and yet the rich in India are hugely under-taxed. Raising this tax rate to 40% will still keep India’s rich among the lowest taxed globally, while lifting the economy out of depression.

While the country continues to grapple with the health and economic crisis as a result of COVID-19, widespread hunger and food insecurity is a silent emergency that has not been getting sufficient attention. Unfortunately, the Union Budget also does not include any significant measures to address this.

"Health Care Takes Centre Stage, Finally" was the title of a chapter in the Economic Survey 2020-21, released a few days ago. Sadly, as we look into the details of the budget figures, that does not seem to be the case, despite all the talk. The Union budget has Clearly Failed to Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Was.

In the midst of the worst health and economic crisis the country has faced since Independence, the government will not spend more on anything that affects the lives of the people. The Budget documents constitute an extended piece of fiction and the numbers in the Budget bear little relation to the reality.

Although the Finance Minister claimed that the Budget 2021 would be one "like never before", it actually seems like a return to business as usual in 2021-22, with the pandemic having made some limited fiscal difference. There is no shift from fiscal conservatism or the neoliberal agenda.

While the country continues to face a highly uncertain future on both the pandemic and economic fronts and their mutual impact on each other, the 'reforms' facilitate greater control of big corporate capital.

The budget of 2021-22 is placed in the context of extreme demand depression following the Covid-19 crisis when the economy needs a massive demand boost through fiscal stimulus for faster recovery. However, inflation, crowding-out and the sustainability of the public debt are the three main objections to a rise in fiscal deficit.

The budget speech is most likely to be a self-congratulatory declaration of how the government's finances have withstood the pandemic and how the economy is reviving, but it will only be worth listening to if the Finance Minister moves to a more expansionary fiscal stance that prioritises employment generation and public service provision.

How much the government claimed to have spent in 2020-21, and how much it intends to spend in 2021-22, are the two main numbers to look out for in the upcoming budget as these will determine whether there is any real hope of sustained macroeconomic recovery in the near future.

The financial year 2020-21 warranted a change in the stance of the government, with a shift away from fiscal conservatism to a more proactive fiscal policy, but the NDA government has persisted with its neoliberal fiscal stance, resulting in collapsing revenues and stagnant expenditures.

Dissimilar patterns between the real and the financial sectors of economies impart a dissonance within the economy, with prosperous finance hardly relevant in the context of the stagnating real sector and this paradoxical situation has been observed in many countries.

Because a pandemic can be overcome only when it is overcome everywhere, embracing an every-country-for-itself approach would seem irrational. And yet, as the unseemly competition for vaccine doses indicates, that is exactly what many countries have done.

A comparison with India's South Asian neighbours points to significant shortfalls in the management of the Covid pandemic in India. This is also the result of the relative long term neglect of health provision in India.

The Prime Minister, in his speech, had made several claims about his relief programmes in the past three months. But various recent estimates and field-based reports clearly suggest the huge gap that exists between these claims and the reality of implementation.

A webinar titled "COVID-19 Pandemic and Fiscal federalism in India" was organized by Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT) during 27-28 April 2020.

This article presents quantitative evidence from 1331 mandis to show that, over the first three weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown, a large number of agricultural markets were not operational, and in those markets that were operational, arrivals of key agricultural commodities fell very sharply. A disruption of 21 days in being able to sell their crops would have resulted in massive losses to farmers, in particular, to producers of perishable crops.

There are still many uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic: about the extent of its spread, its severity in different countries, the length of the outbreak, and whether an initial decline could be followed by a recurrence.

India has betrayed the developing world by blocking a proposal for the IMF to issue new SDRs, which would have provided much-needed liquidity at a time of crisis.

The Covid-19 pandemic will worsen greatly the magnitude of poverty, brought about by the mass migration of the suddenly unemployed workers in urban areas towards the village, which still remains "the sink" for Indian Capitalism.

The global economy is in the grip of an unprecedented crisis, once never experienced before in its history. The virus pandemic has yet to run its course in most countries, but meanwhile, the containment measures – which have involved major restrictions on mobility, gatherings and economic activity – have already imposed a massive economic cost.

This is a study conducted by Society for Social and Economic Research (SSER). SSER has requested researchers who have been conducting field-based studies of villages and the rural economy to reach out to informants in their study areas over telephone and obtain information on what was happening in the context of COVID-19 Pandemic.

As millions are suddenly rendered jobless, the government must enlarge its spending immediately. The current pandemic has brought to fore the fundamental conflict between interests of finance capital and those of people.

With no mechanisms in place to deal with the problem of migrant labourers and delivery issues, Modi government has almost made sure that even its paltry ration scheme does not reach the neediest.

Images of migrants walking hundreds of kilometers to return home are showing the extent of the government’s indifference to the lives of millions. The almost complete privatization of social reproduction in India has left its legacy in the large-scale malnourishment that makes our population uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus.

The flight of footloose portfolio capital from India has attracted attention because of its impact on stock indices and the value of the rupee. But the bigger danger is of a debt shock that can be more damaging for the corporate sector.

As the pandemic unfolds, the Indian economy is falling off a cliff. There is an immediate need for massive public spending beyond conventional fiscal standards. There is also a need for a global plan for significant debt reduction, massive increase in global liquidity, more aid and moratoriums to survive this crisis.

To face of a pandemic created by globalization under the aegis of capitalism, most countries are taking a socialist turn. Global economic and humanitarian crises like these suggest an end-game for the free-market system.

The relief package announced by the Finance Minister is a niggardly response to an unprecedented health, economic, and humanitarian crisis, severely affecting both demand and supply. The Centre does not seem interested in moving much beyond the lockdown.

In an interview serving as the first wake-up call to the damages of coronavirus lockdown on the economy, Prof Jayati Ghosh says more damage has already been done in two days of lockdown than by demonetisation since it happened in November 2016.

State policies to deal with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic tend to address financial losses of companies. But the material impact is much worse for informal workers who constitute the bulk of the global workforce.

It is clear from the current pandemic that the tenets of neo-liberalism must be reversed to introduce a comprehensive public healthcare system and a universal public distribution system; otherwise several precious lives will be lost.

The production setback triggered by the coronavirus epidemic in China will soon be fed by countries turning propagators. Prospects of deep recession now seem daunting as the fragility of neo-liberalism is revealed.