When the solution caused the problem.

"How can India's most precious resource, its crores of children, adolescents and young adults, be actually educated, taught to be lifelong learners, instead of being merely sent to school and a free meal?" asked TK Arun. Healthcare, housing for all, care for the elderly and protection of environment are necessities. All this needs good governance, which means reform of politics. "Industry routinely inflates project costs to create a war chest with which to pay off a the neta-babu-political thug nexus, besides paying for that getaway to Thailand. The inflation cost structure makes for pricier output." "To cease this political funding need to come off the books of companies." This government started the Electoral Bond Scheme wherein any individual or company can buy bonds from the State Bank of India and donate it to any political party. The bonds are anonymous so no one knows who the donor is but the bank, and hence the government, knows who bought the bonds. Naturally, the ruling BJP got over 95% of bonds, helping it to win elections. Politics can only be reformed by those in power, which means politicians need lots of money to bribe voters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi "has relied heavily on welfare schemes to boost hos popularity. In some parts of India, it is hard to locate a voter who has not benefited personally from one of Modi's schemes, or is not related to someone who has," wrote Sadanand Dhume. "But is it sustainable? With economic growth slowing to a meagre 4.5%, the fiscal deficit ballooning and so-called tax terrorism by rapacious taxmen driving businesses into their shell, it is hard to see how." If welfare schemes are benefiting the majority of people has Modi achieved some of what Arun is demanding? The problem is that welfare schemes are financed by taxes raised by the government, which depend on nominal GDP, and the growth rate of nominal GDP fell down to a record low of 6.088% in September 2019. The Budget predicted a GDP growth rate of 12% , so with the rate of growth dropping to nearly half of that there will be a substantial drop in expected tax collection. The government needs to spend more to stimulate GDP growth to increase tax collections to pay for welfare schemes but that will mean increasing debt. Modi suddenly withdrew Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes from circulation hoping to earn Rs 3 trillion from notes that would not be returned. "After demonetisation, considerable amounts of cash made their way to banks, who on-lent a major part of that to NBFCs (non banking financial companies)," wrote Arvind Subramanian. They in turn lent heavily to the real estate sector and with both real estate and NBFCs is trouble debt funding has dried up. So, what to do? "Stepping up government expenditure on consumption and investment is the only answer," wrote Deepak Nayyar. But that is what started the rot in the first place. Oh dear.