@rosslufc A stimulus is very different from a budget.
Budget can focus on policy changes, including environmental focus. I'm all for pro environmental moves. Pro environmental changes are going to cost money in the short term - both to the government (think subsidies or tax incentives) and to the industry (retooling, new processes etc) - a situation like this one where the government doesn't have money and the credit markets are in a fix is hardly the right time to focus on it.
There is little room for such changes in a situation demanding stimulus. As @derek1111 put it so eloquently elsewhere - you don't ask a patient on a ventilator in an icu having breathing trouble to take morning walks or improve their diet. That comes later, after they have recovered from the immediate danger, from the local shock.
I'm not even going to comment on the 266 billion number because for its a hodgepodge of everything under the sun and thus means little.
@nischansr This may technically be called a stimulus, but its objectives and the ways it seeks to achieve objectives are very much the same as a budget.
@rosslufc Then it's perhaps the wrong thing to focus on in the middle of a pandemic - in the dire destruction of demand and jobs that we are going to face.
@nischansr This stimulus should've focused on creating demand/employment in the renewables space. Solar farms, EVs, batteries, to name a few.
When the covid situation blows over - we are still going to have the much more deadly climate crisis on our hands. We're letting a huge opportunity to slip through our fingers.
Solar farms - we have enough expertise in that area and we have the biggest solar projects in the world. However, we need to increase capacity massively. EVs/Batteries - We have Tata and Mahindra making EVs, Maruti Suzuki was supposed to launch its Wagon R EV as well, pre covid. Surely govt could've earmarked, say, $10bn of the $266bn for R&D in this sector. Modi did say that he wanted all new vehicles to be EV by 2030.
If you're wondering why you have so many downvotes it's because you've misread it all. The government isn't putting money in coal. On the contrary, it's moving out of coal. It ended the monopoly of state run Coal India Ltd. Now there will be more private players in it and less of CIL.
Solar and EV all have a place in future, but not in the immediate future. The immediate future requires stimulus to save the existing businesses.
@itjesus I think as a nation, we can't be blind to the bigger problem, and we have to focus on both getting rid of Covid and fixing the environment. I believe we can definitely do both at the same time. Its not a binary either/or situation.
@rosslufc I would appreciate some measures to reign in overpopulation. A one child policy with 90% income tax rate for those with more than one kid. That alone will solve nearly all our problems including the pollution problem to some extent.
@jesuschristismylord33 Everybody is free to want anything they like but that doesn't mean they will get it. Sex determination is banned in India and female foeticide is no longer a big problem. If somebody gets a girl child, he will have to accept her.
What you are talking about is a social problem and the solution to that is not to allow people to keep reproducing till they get a boy child. That won't make these people love their girl children any more than they do now. The solution lies in educating people and as standard of living increases due to lower population in future, the aversion towards girl child will automatically decrease.
@resjudicata Every policy has it's problems. We have to learn to live with those problems for the greater good of all. Earth does not have infinite resources to cater to every individual's freedom and choice.
