Establish fiscal council to scale up spending

India will have to address the big fiscal prudence challenge, which is not captured by the fiscal deficit/GDP metric

There is now a body of expert analysis on economic recovery after the lockdown. In this column, I distill the key common messages and briefly expand on fiscal issues.

There seems to be consensus on the following:

1. We should now be thinking of how we can restart activities in low infection regions with adequate precautions. This involves more targeted lockdowns; identify pockets which have to be kept under close watch and continued lockdown, while restarting activities in other areas which can then (a) produce goods and services, (b) generate resources to help the lockdown areas. The largest employers in the organised