Best of BS Opinion: Rocky road for highways, India's census, and more

Policies to halt the economic slowdown are contingent on recognising the problem first, former prime minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday. By that yardstick, there’s little hope. The Budget contained no hint of the S-word and the looming crisis in the telecom industry over paying adjusted gross revenue dues is unlikely to help, nor will growing tax terrorism, the slowing momentum in road construction nor even the anticipated dislocation caused by the impending National Population Register exercise. All these topics have been discussed on the opinion page today. Kanika Datta sums up the views.

The tax department is now sending notices to directors of private limited companies, holding them liable for pending dues and demanding payment in 10-15 days. The consequences of that old, old problem of scrambling to meet unrealistic tax targets rears its head again and, more than anything else, vitiates the investment climate, says the top edit here

The second edit discusses the mounting financing problems that are causing the road construction programme – one of the undoubted achievements of the Modi government’s first term – to lose momentum. Read here

Aakar Patel explains here how the National Population Register enumeration exercise is likely to hit data collection for the all important decadal census exercise. 

Plans to list government bonds in global debt benchmarks is arguably India’s best bet to attract the relatively passive and sticky part of global capital. But opening up a limited number of ‘special securities’ to free access for foreign portfolio investors  means it will take a few years before India can lean on index-driven flows to finance a significant portion of the government’s budget, says Sameer Goel of Deutsche Bank. Read his analysis here

   

Quote of the day

 

‘The adjusted gross revenue (AGR) case is an unprecedented crisis facing the industry’

 

Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal