It's going to be more of the same.

"Calls for ramping up the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are growing louder ahead of the upcoming budget, with rural distress deepening across India and private consumption growing anemically," wrote Alexander and Kwatra. "In theory, MGNREGS should boost wages by directly providing paid rural employment to rural households and by providing greater competition for rural wage-earning activities." Which means that the scheme acts as a minimum wage, thus pushing up wages and increasing consumption across rural areas. "Between 2011-12 and 2017-18, earnings of regular workers declined in both rural and urban areas," wrote Prof Himanshu. No action to improve the economy will succeed "in the absence of public expenditure-led demand injection, which must be undertaken even if it means breaching the Center's fiscal deficit target". The government finances fiscal deficit by borrowing from the market by issuing bonds, on which it pays interest. The higher the borrowing the higher the interest the government has to pay so the Reserve Bank (RBI) has resorted to 'Operation Twist', buying long-term bonds while selling short-term ones, to bring down bond yields. Unfortunately, the jump in retail inflation in December has raised bond yields despite Operation Twist, wrote Aparna Iyer. Since borrowing cost for private companies have not come down the RBI needs to continue with Twist, thinks Iyer, as increased borrowing by the government raises the cost of borrowing for everyone, "The key to macro-economic stability, therefore, is to keep the fiscal deficit of government borrowing within prudent limits," wrote M Bhusnurmath. But, "People are not spending as much money on buying things as they used to, given the lack of confidence they have in their economic future," wrote Vivek Kaul. Which means that economic growth is solely dependent on government spending. "For all these reasons, and more, now is the time for the FM (finance minister) to take courage in her hands and use the only tool at her command - fiscal easing - to provide the much-needed counter-cyclical stimulus to the economy," thinks Bhusnurmath. India has a large informal economy which "accounts for nearly half of the GDP and employs 85 percent of the labor force," wrote M Ghatak. The government should increase spending without worrying about fiscal deficit because stimulating the informal sector will increase spending, which will increase earnings of the formal sector and bring down the deficit by increasing tax collection. In addition to global problems, "India faces several structural problems that a tweak of tax rates or budgetary allocations cannot address," wrote TK Arun. With experts so confused we can expect more handouts and higher taxes. In other words, more of the same.