Now, the kitchen sink: Finance minister has kissed fiscal restraint goodbye

Lack of demand ails the economy. But that's not addressed, nor are declining exports; the bad old habit of 'loan melas' is back; and tax has been cut in a way that hurts states, writes T N Ninan

All previous announcements having failed to do the trick, Nirmala Sitharaman has thrown the kitchen sink at the problem of slack economic growth — officially recorded for the last economic quarter at 5 per cent, and expected by many observers to be even lower in the current quarter. In slashing the corporation tax rate to the long-promised 25 per cent, the finance minister has delivered what her predecessor promised five years ago, and which a draft direct tax code had proposed even earlier. She has thus brought the corporation tax rate closer to the levels in other countries in the