Fixing The Slowdown

The last week of August has witnessed a series of economic stimulus announcements by the Narendra Modi government, which seems to have finally accepted that the economy is in serious trouble. On August 23, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the first shot of the stimulus package with an upfront disbursement of Rs 70,000 crore to recapitalise banks, a set of administrative measures to speed up GST refunds and reduce meddling of tax authorities.

Five days later, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar jointly revealed what they claimed to be the next dose tweaks in FDI rules to attract more investment into India. On August 30, Sitharaman announced the mega merger of 10 public sector banks into four large entities. Punjab National Bank will merge with Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank to form India's second largest bank. Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank will merge to form the fourth largest bank. Union Bank of India will merge with Andhra Bank and