Articles by Mala Lalvani

While the 2009-10 budget was branded as a lacklustre budget, there seems to be near consensus that it rightly pushed aside the issue of fiscal rules, as growth is the top-most priority at this moment and all else can follow. This paper argues that even if we were to accept this position, the direction and structure of expenditures since the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act has been far from "responsible" even when macro caps were being met. The structure of expenditure allocations in the 2009-10 budget appears to be inadequate for a "fiscal stimulus". The time is thus opportune to chalk out a set of "Second Generation Fiscal Rules", which will address the inadequacies that have surfaced during the four-year experience with fiscal rules at the central government level. Prioritising these second generation rules - thus following the gradualist approach - and strengthening enforcement via greater power to the Comptroller and Auditor General, which could play the role of a Fiscal Council, would facilitate greater success of the new rules.

The opportunity provided by high growth and a comfortable revenue situation to make a serious attempt to boost allocations for education and agriculture has been allowed to slip away. The high priority status accorded to these sectors in the budget speech is not backed by numbers. Instead the numbers have been played around with - such gimmickry only serves to make budgets lose their credibility. Further, the track record of the government fails to inspire confidence that the fiscal targets will be attained. One cannot help but conclude that Budget 2007-08 appears to be long on words alone.

Scarcity of resources for urban infrastructure is a universal concern in developing economies. Also, prudent mandate of macroeconomic management has led to a reduction in hand-downs from higher governments. The sub-national governments have had to look at several alternatives with a sense of urgency. In this paper we focus on the possibilities of the sub-national governments accessing, the financial markets in general and the debt market in particular. Our paper focuses on the need to create virtual entities - self-help groups amongst the urban local bodies - that could expand the domain of eligible ULBs. We visualise a scheme for capital market access by ULBs, which would work without the state acting as an intermediary and also without any new institution being set up. We provide the theoretical underpinnings, illustrate and operationalise the idea with the help of data related to ULBs in the state of Maharashtra.

The budget for 2004-05 was a far cry from the 'dream budget' that was being expected from the new finance minister. It has certainly not delivered on the promises and goals of being 'pro-poor' and 'pro-rural'. The budgetary allocations in no way make it appear significantly different from its predecessor. However, the one important message that the budget did send out is that it intends to maintain and take forward the reform process.

Tackling Inconsistencies Mala Lalvani A dose look at the data on select aggregates in public finance reveals that a number of accounting changes had been resorted to over the years, making the data series subject to inconsistencies, rendering futile any further research based on these series. In the present study a long time series of fiscal aggregates were subjected to microscopic scrutiny and an attempt made to circumvent the problem posed by the inconsistencies in these time series.