Socio-political stability and growth

Growth prospects are threatened by citizenship proposals, which are leading to Centre-state confrontation, social strife, and disruption of working people's lives

When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her first Budget in July last year, this columnist, like many others, had listed a litany of economic woes including the sharp decline in the growth rate of GDP, fiscal pressures, twin balance-sheet problems, the woes of non-banking financial companies, the slow pace of job creation, distress in small enterprises and farms, trade battles, and the slowdown in global growth drivers. Nothing has changed and some of these problems have become even more troublesome. The government is now more willing to admit to the existence of these difficulties and the prime minister seems to