Stimulus without stimulating.

As the pandemic shut economies down, "Emerging markets which stimulated most aggressively got no payoff in faster recovery, owing in part to the downsides of overindulging. India was not among the biggest spenders, which tended to suffer higher inflation, higher interest rates and currency depreciation, at least partly cancelling out the sugar high of stimulus," wrote Ruchir Sharma. On 20 May 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a stimulus package of Rs 20 trillion. "The PM said the Rs 20-trillion package, nearly 10 percent of India's gross domestic product (GDP), would be with the objective of putting money into people's pockets to spur domestic consumption and demand," BS. But the actual fiscal stimulus was just about 1% of GDP, according to Fitch Solutions. "The new spending will only amount to about 1 percent of GDP, which would take India's total central government Covid-19 fiscal response to-date to only 1.8 percent of GDP, it said," HT. Modi is known to indulge in jumla, as when he promised a gift of Rs 1.5 million to every citizen by confiscating black money, ET. Not surprising, "What is made to look like a stimulus is mostly a grand loan mela," The Print. Instead of stimulus, "Government earned around Rs 8 lakh crore (Rs 8 trillion) from taxes levied on petrol and diesel in the last three financial years, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed Parliament," in December 2021, NDTV. Despite taxing money out of citizen's pockets, instead of helping them, "The fiscal deficit for 2020-21 was at Rs 18.3 trillion or 9.2% of GDP. The fiscal deficit for 2021-22, the current financial year, is expected to be at Rs 15.9 trillion or 6.9% of GDP," wrote Vivek Kaul & Chintan Patel. "The total liabilities of the central government as of March 2023 are expected to be at Rs 152.2 trillion. From March 2020 to March 2023, in a period of three years, the government would have ended up adding Rs 50 trillion to its liabilities." Government debt in emerging economies jumped by 10% to 63%, whereas "The Center's debt-to-GDP ratio for FY22 (financial year 2021-22) was 59.9%". "According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), states' debt-to-GDP ratio is also likely to be 31% in FY22," "which will lead to a debt-to-GDP ratio of approximately 90.9%," wrote Jagadish Shettigar & Pooja Mehra. Interest payment on government debt is expected to increase 15% to Rs 9.30 trillion in FY23, ET. Meanwhile, "The mobile user count in India fell by 1.28 crore (12.8 million) in December 2021 compared to the previous month....Trai data showed," CNBC. People have to really hard up to give up their phones. India is better off than other emerging nations, says Ruchir Sharma. The government isn't. Neither are the people.