Mitul

My @Volkswagen Vento taking good care of me and vice versa. Picture perfect.

Laadki Bahin 1500₹ a month = 18000₹ per annum. Per Laadki Bahin @mieknathshinde 2.5 crore women are expected to benefit. Ergo; It will Cost the exchequer a minimum of 46000 crores. That’s 4 X the budget of the PMC. This when the last years fiscal deficit of Maharashtra is already over 1.10 lakh crores. This year it’s projected to double to over 2 lakh crores. 1 lakh crores plus is the amount in direct taxes the city of Pune pays per annum already. Which simply means that this money will have to be borrowed and spent. Interest will have to be paid on the borrowings. At this rate the fiscal deficit as a percentage of GSDP which should be ideally below 3% and is approximately 2.6% now will breach the 3% threshold. How far will this go. Given tepid growth numbers and commitments made to helicopter money schemes such as laadki bahin, bhavantar bhugtan yojana, fertiliser subsidies, free electricity for farmers and poor families- projects and interest free loans for infrastructure projects such as the orange gate marine drive tunnel or the thane borivali tunnel. Over 96000 crore or an additional 1 lakh crore burden is to come the way of whichever new government comes in @Dev_Fadnavis mi-punha… Not to be left far behind, the opposition parties led by @PawarSpeaks @uddhavthackeray & @prithvrj have committed to double down on laadki bahin, Current day the interest bills of the state of Maharashtra are in excess of over 31,000 crore. Imagine this doubling. Meanwhile Courts are taking a benign view of subsidies and such as usual. I think the Courts feel that in the midst of so much fiscal profligacy (Maharashtra state budget is 6.2 lakh crores p.a - they blew up over 50 lakh crore in the past decade) at least some money goes into the pockets of paupers by the means of DBT schemes such as laadki bahin. Worldwide it’s evidenced however, Helicopter money schemes only make people lazier while raising inflation. A key example is that of the money helicoptered during Covid into peoples accounts worldwide - the inflation shocks that followed rendered most of the money recieved meaningless. The worst sufferers were countries like Pakistan Argentina and Sri Lanka where annualised inflation hit triple digits and refused to come down. Their currencies lost almost all their value several times over and haven’t recovered much since. Some estimates put the amount of money thrown into peoples and businesses accounts for Covid relief at over 4 to 5 trillion dollars in the USA and OECD economies alone. This money also found its way into PE funds and we saw a market awash with private equity money backing up the most silliest of ideas from Byjus through to WeWork… the residual inflation impact of this money was so severe that the world which had benign interest rates until before Covid began to ratchet them up and they’re still at all time highs of 4.65 to 4.75 %. Us fed. The thing is Laadki bahin will have similar consequences, it’s just that it’s invisible to our political actors today, Never mind who will wear the CM’s crown post November - Uneasy will be his head, this all out gambit may not work and might even have to be reduced or withdrawn. The fact is such schemes with helicopter money are often open admissions of failure by the government at not being able to provide succour, enough employment, quality of life or infrastructure, education or health care services. These are bribes not benefits into people’s accounts so that they’re elected again. Launched during the last 2 months of their tenure, This is an open admission of failure. This will only vitiate the economy not strengthen it. Meanwhile the real issues of taxpayers such as Clean Air, Pure Water and Zero Garbage continue to receive the short shrift, Laadki Bahin might be the passport to misery and power for those amongst us who choose to serve the people, the tax payers shall continue to dodge potholes on roads and suffer traffic jams