Subhash Chandra Garg- Economy, Finance and Fiscal Policy Strategist

Rebuilding Telecom Business in India Subhash Chandra Garg Fluctuating fortunes of Telecommunication Business in India Telecom business is broken again in India.   Cellular telecom business in India was born in failure in 1995 when 14 companies bid for mobile service licences on atrociously high fixed licence fee basis (spectrum came bundled with licence). These were the days when a call on cellular phone cost over Rs. 16 per minute. Annual fixed licence fee was calculated at the auction determined fixed licence fee or @Rs. 6000 per subscriber, whichever was higher. Almost all companies defaulted on payment of the licence fee. The Government took a big courageous decision in 1999 and allowed the telecom companies to migrate from fixed licence fee regime to revenue share based licence fee regime. The decision transformed the fortunes of the industry. Falling technology prices contributed further. Cost per subscriber declined massively as the subscriber base grew by...

Budget 2020-21 Will It Stimulate Growth, Improve Redistribution & Deliver Public Services Better? SUBHASH CHANDRA GARG SUMMARY VERSION At its core, budget making is an exercise in making an assessment of the taxes and debt which the Government of India can raise, maintaining macro-economic stability, to fund an expenditure programme, based on policy preferences of the Government, to stimulate growth, to deliver a redistribution programme for poor and needy and to provide public goods and services. The expenditure proposals should lead to determination, design and scale of financing needed for appropriate expenditure programme for (i) stimulating growth in the economy, (ii) delivering a programme to pull-out poor people out of poverty and hunger and to provide a suitable scale and mode of assistance to the people who are unable to earn their living for reasons of illness, old age, physical handicap or any other socio-physical reason like uneducated wido...

Budget 2020-21 Will It Stimulate Growth, Improve Redistribution and Deliver Public Services Better? What are Budgets meant to do? At its core, budget making is an exercise in making an assessment of the taxes and debt which the Government of India can raise, maintaining macro-economic stability, to fund an expenditure programme, based on policy preferences of the Government, to stimulate growth, to deliver a redistribution programme for poor and needy and to provide public goods and services. First part of the budget making exercise is to assess current expenditure programme and take a call to scale up, shed, downsize, restructure and re-focus existing expenditure programmes and to decide to take up new programme. This exercise should lead to determination, design and scale of financing needed for appropriate expenditure programme for (i) stimulating growth in the economy, (ii) delivering a programme to pull-out poor people out of poverty and hunger and to provide...