A lot has been said and written about the Indian economy and how it is in a tailspin. But how many of us really understand the gobbledygook of the suited-booted types on national TV? You may or may not understand a word of what the pundits say, but have you ever wondered what it would be like, if this government ran your household?
This shall help you decide if you’d leave your household in their hands, let alone the country:
| Gross Domestic Product | ₹ 15,89,604 crores |
| National Budget | ₹ 16,70,674 crores |
| National debt | ₹ 10,47,460 crores |
| New debt | ₹ 81,070 crores |
| Estimated cost of Food Security Bill | ₹ 1,76,446 crores |
| Revenue foregone in the last year | ₹ 68,000 crores |
Now let’s take out the crore, halve it and pretend it’s a typical lower middle class annual family budget, (Yes, yes how many even earn this many in India?). This is how it stacks up now.
| Annual family income | ₹ 7,94,802 |
| Money the family spent | ₹ 8,35,337 |
| Outstanding debt | ₹ 5,23,730 |
| New debt added in the last one year | ₹ 40,535 |
| Money to be spent on finally feeding a child who’s been starving for so long | ₹ 88,223 |
| Income declined by family out of misplaced goodwill | ₹ 34,000 |
So, in their hands, a family that lives on ₹8 lakhs per year would be neck-deep in debt, over ₹5 lakhs. They would add ₹40,000 to that figure every year, and spend twice that, just to feed the starving child, when they clearly are in no position to do that.
This is how a household budget would look like if our netas ran it! Next time you hear the “fundamentals are strong” dialogue, you know this is what it is. You begin to wonder if there is a method to the madness! No household would ever tolerate or sustain such a budget but the mega-family called the Union of India seems to be doing just that!
