Could someone please sketch India’s Rupees 35(?) trillion (lakh crore) public debt?
Exactly nineteen years ago, in late October 1990, I advised the then-Congress Party President Rajiv Gandhi as follows: “The prime indicator of economic mismanagement today is not the annual deficit, but rather the vast public debt today of more than Rs. 273,000 crores (Rs.2.73 trillion). Our Government has borrowed something like Rs. 3500/- on behalf of each man, woman and child in the country — and spent it. A pile of rupee coins adding up to the public debt of India would stretch 4.55 million km into the sky, or be as long as six trips to the moon and back. That is the size of the problem….” In recent years I have estimated the stock of India’s public debt has grown to perhaps Rs 30 trillion; after the lobbyist-induced corporate pork aka the “fiscal stimulus” since 2008, it has perhaps risen to Rs 35 trillion. (1 trillion = 1 lakh crore ie. 1,000,000,000,000 = 100000,0000000) Now when I advised Rajiv it was still early days in the IT-revolution and in fact I wrote the words quoted ab
