The economy does not forgive bribery.

Having created very high inflation by dumping our money on useless social schemes the Congress is in a fix. General elections must be held by May and the people are furious as recent elections in 4 states have shown. To prevent a credit rating downgrade to junk status the fiscal deficit must be controlled, which means cutting expenditure, but if you stop giving handouts you have started it will be bye bye vote bank. It is not enough to bribe voters. Smaller parties must also be bribed to hang on to power because without power you cannot lay your hands on taxpayer money to bribe voters. Thus there are 51 ministries with 79 ministers with legions of civil servants, all sucking the blood out of the economy. For comparison, the US, a $16 trillion economy, functions very well with 15 Secretaries and 7 of cabinet rank, making 22 in all. If you cannot reduce expenditure you are forced to increase revenues. So the Congress has increased taxes on everything, which has increased prices further and reduced consumer demand. The RBI wants to the Wholesale Price Index to come down to 5%. WPI consists of manufacturing which constitutes 55%, fuel group at 15% and primary articles, which are raw food, processed food and minerals, at 30%. Cost of fuel has been rising because the government has been reducing ' subsidies ' on fuel without reducing taxes. Food costs cannot fall because the MNREGA scheme is index linked, thus setting an ever higher floor under rural wages, bribing farmers with the Minimum Support Price and hoarding food grains for the Food Security Act. Thus, if the WPI is to fall to 5% from 6.16% in December manufacturing will have to keep prices low. With raw material, fuel and electricity prices increasing and labor demanding higher wages to compensate for inflation the only way to make profits will be to increase productivity and cut costs. This was shown by  a fall in new investments in the quarter ending December 2013. Manufacturers shelved investments worth Rs 2 trillion. While the stock market is reaching for the stars because of foreign investors the Foreign Direct Investment, which is stable inflow, dropped by 36.6% in October compared to 2013, from $1.94 billion to $1.23 billion. This will naturally reduce employment. If bribery is a crime for us it must be made a crime for the politicians.