Arvind Panagariya voices concern over budget, branded 'foreigner'

Arvind Panagariya, the Indian-American economist who served as the vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog, wrote a column for the Economic Times dissecting the Union Budget 2018. But what surprised observers was that Panagariya, who was the blue-eyed boy of the establishment, castigated the government's budget and said it signaled a return of the pre-1991 protectionist 'License Raj' of the Indian state.

"When GoI raised custom duties on a number of products in December 2017, as an eternal optimist, I took the view that this had been done for revenue reasons. But increases in duties on a long list of products ranging from kites and footwear to cellular mobiles phones and motor vehicles in Budget 2018 have ended that optimism," Panagariya wrote in his opinion piece.

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