Like all of us, Ms S. Raman also dreams of staying healthy, but she just can’t leave her love for pizza. Finally, one day, she met Mr A. Jalebi, the chef who gave her the magical recipe for a healthy pizza. Ms S. Raman was in awe of the magical recipe. Well, the secret lay in going back to basics. Mr A. Jalebi increased the vegies of tax collection and reduced the calories of wasteful subsidies and expenditure. He successfully cut down the pizza size from 4.5cm (Fiscal deficit: 4.5%) in 2014 to the ideal 3.5cm in 2017. There was a complimentary milkshake of 1.6% increase in the centre’s gross tax to GDP ratio. A few vitamins were sprinkled as indirect taxes like GST, though most of them were burned in the oven’s high heat of tax devolution to states. But thanks to the amazing culinary skills of Mr A. Jalebi, he still managed to make the recipe quite healthy by cutting a major slack on the cheese burst crust in the form of subsidies on petrol. 

 

But a ‘silent crisis ‘was brewing. The healthy pizza was more of an Instagram trend. Lo and behold, the size of pizza in 2019 shot up to 6.1cm against the target of 3.4cm and next year also it was 4.6cm against the target of 3.3cm.  

 

Ms S. Raman was dejected. The problem lay in the reduced GST collection. Nevertheless, she had her hopes high, Hashtag_ Just One Slice This Year was her New Year resolution, after all! However, who knew her life would turn topsy turvy. 

 

Six months into the lockdown 

 

Ms S. Raman was sweltering in the summer heat.  She craved a tiny 3.5 cm pizza. She couldn’t go out because everything was locked down due to COVID-19. That’s why she simply ordered the pizza at home from  Swiggy. 

 

Ting -Tong Ting- Tong.  

 

The pizza boy is here! Ms S. Raman quickly rushed towards the door. She didn’t know what was waiting for her. It was a zombie apocalypse. It was a huge zombie. The melted cheese was flowing like lava from his mouth. He had ugly hands with bloody marks off Non-Performing Assets. Ms S. Raman quickly called 101 for outside help. It was late when she realized that it was a ‘synchronized crisis’, the entire world was in trouble. To her surprise, there was also an army of small zombies reigning havoc. She didn’t realize that they were the loans of the Food Corporation of India. 

 

By now, Ms S. Raman was totally confused. A huge zombie, little zombies roaming around, and all the nearby villages were in crisis. Ms S. Raman rushed outside. There she met an old friend, Ms RBI. She urged for help. The zombies were ruining her house. She was starving, and she hadn’t even eaten the pizza. Hunger was driving her crazy. The butterflies in her stomach protested and marched to and fro,  like migrants from Gujarat to UP and farmers from Punjab to Delhi. It was a state of perfect chaos! 

 

Ms RBI took out a powerful weapon of Open Market Operations. She fired onto the zombie. Meanwhile, Ms S. Raman saw her daughters approaching, in masked faces and, of course, with sanitized hands. They were her Monetized Assets. Ms S. Raman’s phone also started ringing, Tring- Tring! She could take outside help to fight the zombie. Together the monetized assets, foreign loans and open market operations financed by small savings will be Ms S. Raman’s way outside the crisis. 

 

As we sit here and read, Ms S. Raman is facing a crisis. We do not know if the zombie gets larger or it shrinks. Nevertheless, one thing is absolute, Ms S. Rahman needs to exercise regularly and build the soft infrastructure, i.e., education, deregulation and ease of doing business. Otherwise, her dream of a healthy life would burst and her strength to fight the zombie would droop. Hence, it's not about just one slice this year but structural reforms.  

What happens is still to be revealed. Meanwhile, let me go and order a pizza (after the workout, of course).