Reducing govt spending holds the key to fixing India's inflation worries

If the finance ministry wants private investment to revive, it must make things easy for it and resist the temptation to go on spending just because it can

A few days ago, the finance minister asked the private sector to invest more. This reminded me of several similar requests made by NDA finance ministers between 2000 and 2004. One of them was Yashwant Sinha. The other was Jaswant Singh. 

Their appeals fell on deaf ears because then, like now, the external environment was not good, and the domestic interest rates were high. In other words, it was too costly to borrow and invest when you weren't sure if you would be able to sell all the output from that investment. 

Precisely the same thing is happening now. The