Fiscal consolidation today

Mercifully, India has been spared the problems that foreign currency sovereign debt would have posed

Fiscal consolidation (FC) in a recession is contextually very different for emerging market economies like India from FC in times of normal growth.

By my definition (a consistent fall in gross domestic product, or GDP, growth for three years running), India has been in a recessionary situation since FY16, with the usual consequences, particularly falling tax revenue buoyancies. The situation was further complicated by the painful and slipshod implementation of the goods and services tax (GST), which was a task of complexity well beyond the capabilities of the Ministry of Finance. For the same reason, disinvestment targets were unrealistic, and consistently