India at 75: Prudent public finance policy still remains a challenge

Among other things, making the direct tax regime less confusing and bringing in expenditure reform are crucial challenges for the central government

The Centre has come a long way in improving its finance over a period of time, especially after the presentation of the dream budget by the then finance minister P Chidambaram in 1997-98, enactment of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM) in early 2000 and introduction of the long-awaited goods and services tax (GST) in 2017, besides embarking on direct benefit transfer (DBT) and pruning subsidies.

However, several challenges confront the Centre in all these aspects as the country celebrates the 75th anniversary of its independence.

Direct Taxes

The tax slabs had more or less stabilised at 10-20-30