GST Cuts, Flip-Flops, and the Politics of Masterstrokes
The government and its cheerleaders are in high spirits again, beating drums for their favourite emperor’s latest “masterstroke.” This time, it’s the modest reduction in GST rates. TV Panels and Tweets buzzing with self-congratulatory chatter. Analysts calling it a historic, and even P. Chidambaram grudgingly called it a “reform”—with the delicious aftertaste of his caveat, “eight years late.” But let us pause. Let us ask the questions that Delhi’s television studios won’t: is tinkering with GST rates a reform? Does lowering a tax slab address the structural bottlenecks that suffocate Indian industry? Or is it another aspirin for a fever whose cause lies deeper in the bones of our political economy? The uncomfortable answer: this is not reform. This is a quick-fix, stitched together to meet political needs in Bihar and to respond to Trump’s tariffs across the ocean. Washington’s second wave of tariffs—punitive and linked to India’s oil flirtations with Russia—landed like a th...