{"id":322998,"date":"2020-05-05T05:39:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-05T05:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=322998"},"modified":"2020-05-05T05:39:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-05T05:39:55","slug":"india-needs-bigger-stimulus-package-says-nobel-laureate-abhijit-banerjee-in-conversation-with-rahul-gandhi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/india-needs-bigger-stimulus-package-says-nobel-laureate-abhijit-banerjee-in-conversation-with-rahul-gandhi\/","title":{"rendered":"India needs bigger stimulus package, says Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee in conversation with Rahul Gandhi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-322999 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/rahul-gandhi-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"749\" height=\"436\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/05\/rahul-gandhi-1.jpg 749w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/05\/rahul-gandhi-1-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/05\/rahul-gandhi-1-696x405.jpg 696w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2020\/05\/rahul-gandhi-1-722x420.jpg 722w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px\" \/>Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, while speaking with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi through video conferencing on Tuesday, suggested that India needs a bigger stimulus package to revive demand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Banerjee asserted that putting cash in the hands of people would be the best way to boost the economy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cWe need a stimulus package. That\u2019s what US, Japan, Europe are doing. We haven\u2019t decided on a large enough stimulus package. We are still talking about 1% of GDP. USA has gone for 10% of GDP,\u201d said Abijit Banerjee.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cWe could even say debt payments for this quarter will be cancelled and taken care of by government. It\u2019s not just a matter of rescheduling it, just permanently cancelling it. We could do that,\u201d Banerjee said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Banerjee also suggested that the government should hand out temporary ration cards to people to deal with the problem of food distribution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Banerjee said he believed while it was important to come out of the lockdown, one needed to be aware of disease&#8217;s path.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cYou don\u2019t want to end the lockdown when a lot of people are getting sick. We have to kind of be aware of the time path of the disease,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee, while speaking with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi through video conferencing on Tuesday, suggested that India needs a bigger stimulus package to revive demand. Banerjee asserted that putting cash in the hands of people would be the best way to boost the economy. \u201cWe need a stimulus package. That\u2019s what US, Japan, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":322999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[11864,579],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323000,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322998\/revisions\/323000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/322999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}