Fiscal Policy and Growth in a Post-COVID-19 World

Why was India’s growth slowing in the run-up to COVID-19 and how much fiscal space was used to stem the slowdown? What is the nature of India’s economic recovery from COVID-19? How does the budget seek to balance fiscal support while reducing the deficit? What was the underlying fiscal impulse in the COVID-19 year and what is it budgeted to be next year? What are the implications for debt sustainability and fiscal–monetary coordination? Finally, what are some paradigm changes the budget seeks to embark on and why is execution so crucial this time? This essay seeks to answer these questions to make sense of growth and fiscal dynamics in a post-COVID-19 world. © 2021 Economic and Political Weekly. All rights reserved.