Shashank Patil, enthusiastic asker (it is my blog, and I say that it is a word) of questions, sends in this article, and asks the following questions:

1. What are the possible difficulties with this?
2. How does this weigh in with any other choice?

This promises to be a fairly long post, and for the sake of knowing where we are at any point of time, I am going to divide it into three major sections:

1. The need for the stimulus
2. Show me the money!
3. What is the best choice out of all the options available?

The need for the stimulus

There’s four things that go into adding up our GDP: consumption, investment, government expenditure, and net exports (net simply means we deduct the rupee value of all of our imports from the rupee value of all of our exports, over one accounting year). But be careful, calculating GDP is surprisingly complicated!

During these times, good luck getting C, I and NX to be anything remotely related to good news, and so we’re almost certain to not have great GDP growth, or even growth at all. Unless el sarkar steps in. So when we ask for a fiscal stimulus, we’re basically saying the other components of GDP are near comatose, so government spending will have to take up the slack.

Maybe the government can build out way better health infrastructure than we have at present, like Andy Mukherjee says. Maybe we can provide clean drinking water, along with a whole list of excellent suggestions made by Shankkar Aiyyar. Direct money transfers to the poor is another idea. But for all of this to happen, we need to start at the basics: where is the money?

The government didn’t have enough money before the pandemic hit (that’s what a fiscal deficit means), and the problem is way worse now: much more money needs to be spent, and not enough money is coming in by way of tax revenue.

Ergo, all of the columns about how to raise the money that will need to be spent.

Show me the money!

There’s three ideas that I have liked so far:

• Deepak Shenoy talks about a realignment of the liabilities side of the balance sheet of the RBI unlocking about INR 400,000 crores (thinking about numbers as big as this is an invitation to a migraine, but this is 4 trillion, unless I am mistaken. Please let me know if I am!). Let’s call this the DS method.
• Andy Mukherjee talks about the government selling stakes in PSE’s (that’s Public Sector Enterprises). The details matter in this case: the sale will be to an SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle), which will finance the purchase by issuing bonds. When markets recover, sell the stake, and redeem the bonds. Method AM.
• And finally, Ajit Ranade offers a pani puri instead of a puchka. That is to say, the same idea as Andy Mukherjee, but with a twist. Instead of the government stakes in PSU’s (undertaking, instead of enterprises) being sold to an SPV, he suggests selling it to the RBI as a repo transaction. That is, sarkar sells to RBI and gets money, but also gets to buy back the shares at the same amount plus an annualized interest rate of around 3%. That’s where the name repo comes from: short for repurchase. And yes, method AR.

What is the best choice?

So maybe this is just me getting old, and therefore more conservative, but I’d rank Deepak Shenoy’s suggestion third. There are two main reasons, although there are others. First, the RBI already gave out some cash last year (and Deepak Shenoy himself has a most excellent article about it. Link 3 in this post, and the others are worth reading too, especially number 5.  Bookmark CapitalMind.in if you haven’t already!). Second, maybe it makes sense to keep some of our powder dry, for who knows what other horrors wait for us in the future? If, god forbid, two years down the line we need more help, it would be better to use the DS method then – because good luck trying to convince folks of the value of PSU stakes after more two years of this.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that this will continue for two years. I’m saying we should be prepared.

Now, in a straight fight between AM and AR, well, which self-respecting Maharashtrian will pick puchkas over pani-puri? I’d plump for Ajit Ranade’s method, and for the following reasons:

1. A repo transaction is likely to withstand market volatility better than being dependent on an SPV, especially one that may be exposed to currency risk.
2. This sounds way more operationally feasible than the AM method. Launching an SPV might be possible right now, and you may even get a decent response because god knows markets will be looking to park funds right now – but like I said, I’m getting old, and would prefer a more conservative route.

And so Shashank, the answer to your question is that Ajit Ranade seems to be onto a pretty good idea, in my opinion. Which is not to say that the others aren’t, of course – but hey, if I didn’t force myself to choose, and write about my choice, how else to fill out a lockdown afternoon?

But on a more serious note, the “how” doesn’t  really matter as much as the when. And the correct answer to that question is “yesterday”.