Rather than playing with public money by writing off large corporate bad loans again and again, India needs to strengthen loan recovery processes, introduce stricter regulation and lending policies, regular audits and to separate long-term infrastructure lending to private companies from commercial banking.

Instead, the government seems inclined to favour big corporations, giving them massive tax cuts and write offs on bad loans while passing the burden of their frauds and taxes onto the people. We must follow the ABG Shipyard scam closely as it unfolds. We must not only count the zeroes, but also hold those responsible to account.

Ashish Kajla and Anirban Bhattacharya authors are researchers at the Centre for Financial Accountability and analyse the government’s financial decision making from a people-centric perspective.