Redefine fiscal responsibility

It is an opportunity for a new finance minister to recalibrate the orthodoxy around fiscal rectitude.

In two weeks, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the first Union Budget of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second government. Fundamentally, the Budget is a statement of account of the expenditure and revenue of the Union Government. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the one statistic most eagerly awaited is the fiscal deficit, for the year gone by and the year ahead. But since the Union Budget is more than just an accounting exercise — it is a state of the economy and path of reforms address — the statistic that should take priority over all others is the rate of growth. In a