Ahead of India’s finances on February 1st, Narendra Modi requested Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, to bless the poor and the center class. The prime minister’s request for divine intervention mingled public spirit with political self-interest: frustration about financial development and joblessness contributed to Mr Modi’s lack of his outright majority in elections held final yr. Because it turned out, the center class, quite than the poor, ended up the actual winners of the fiscal assertion. Nirmala Sitharaman, Mr Modi’s finance minister, introduced tax cuts that have been price round 1trn rupees yearly ($12bn, or 0.3% of GDP), which was sufficient to exempt thousands and thousands of comparatively high-earning Indians from earnings tax altogether.
