India should begin with an outsized enough stimulus package to revive demand, Nobelist Abhijit Banerjee said on Tuesday, asserting that putting take advantage the hands of individuals would be the simplest thanks to boost the economy post lockdown.
Banerjee, while lecture Congress leader Rahul Gandhi through video-conferencing, suggested giving money into the hands of rock bottom 60 per cent population to assist revive demand.
He was deliberating on the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic with Gandhi as a part of a series of dialogues broadcast on Congress’ social media handles.
Banerjee said it had been important for India to announce an outsized enough stimulus package to affect the crisis on the lines of what the US, Japan and therefore the Europe do .
“We really haven’t selected an outsized enough stimulus package. We are still talking about 1% of GDP. The us has gone for 10% of GDP,” the noted economist said.
“We have done one thing that i feel is sensible , which is to quite put a moratorium on debt payments. We could do quite that. We could even say that the debt payments for this quarter are going to be cancelled and can be taken care of by the govt ,” he said.
To Gandhi’s question on whether some sort of the Congress-proposed NYAY scheme or direct cash transfer to people was the necessity of the hour, Benerjee answered within the affirmative saying it shouldn’t be limited just to the poorest.
“I would say bottom 60% of the population, we give them some money, nothing bad will happen in my view. If we gave them money, well a number of them won’t need it. Fine they’ll spend it. If they spend it, it might have a stimulus effect,” he said.
