Articles by C P Chandrasekhar

Budget 2019–20 is more concerned with getting private finance for investment, especially in infrastructure, rather than with finding ways to finance much needed state action to address slowing growth and welfare shortfalls. However, even that stance does not free it from the neo-liberal fiscal bind it finds itself in.

With the Supreme Court having declared ultra vires the Reserve Bank of India circular directing banks to pursue bad debt resolution at any cost, the process of making banks alone pay for all-round errors has come to an end. The Court has required the government to specifically authorise each resolution exercise and not delegate blanket authority to theRBI. This would matter in cases such as in the power sector where a misplaced privatisation policy explains the non-performing assets, which the government would now have to take into account. The Court’s order also makes it difficult for theRBI to pretend that it had no role in the generation of theNPAs.

Desperate attempts to prevent liquidation of power sector assets in companies that are defaulters point to a deeper crisis afflicting neo-liberal growth. A sector that was plagued by shortages was opened up to private participation, leading to rapid expansion in the expectation of large profits from liberalised prices. Public sector banks were called upon to finance that expansion with the government being complicit. Now, however, firms find themselves trapped between inadequate demand at prevailing prices and rising costs that precipitate default.

Neo-liberal banking reform was launched in the early 1990s to address the low profitability of the public banking system and the large presence of non-performing assets. It set itself the objectives of cleaning out NPAs, recapitalising the banks and modifying banking practices to restore profitability and drastically reduce NPA volumes. This did initially have some effect. However, while the NPA ratio fell between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s, it has risen sharply since then. Moreover, while earlier priority and non-priority loans contributed equally to total NPAs, more recently, large non-priority loans to the corporate sector account for the bulk of NPAs. An analysis of these features reveals that these trends are indicative of the failure of neo-liberal banking reform in India.

Despite it being the government’s last full budget before the general elections in 2019, the finance minister, constrained by his self-imposed fiscal deficit targets, settled for rhetoric and promises that were not backed with allocations. This frozen macroeconomic policy has foreclosed all options to adopt proactive measures that could make a difference to those who need support. Yet, the financial interests he wants to impress also seem disappointed.