A wish list for 2026: Much can be done by the government as it confronts the challenges India faces

₹100 to the dollar.Former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian argued this week in the Indian Express that ₹100 per dollar is a worthy new-year resolution for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), not least because China and East Asia have kept their currencies cheap to exploit foreign markets: “The markets are trying to do a desirable job that policymakers have been unable or unwilling to do.”Indian companies are savvy enough to hedge their currency exposure.We should do more to help our most labour-intensive industries: ‘Make in India’ needs to be rebranded as ‘Hand-Make in India.’ A much-needed pen-stroke reform, says Laila Tyabji, founder of Dastkar, is to “simply remove GST on handlooms; it needlessly increases the paperwork and end price.”I buy handloom or hand-dyed cotton and walk 400 metres from my apartment to a tailor who adeptly makes shirts out of Kerala mundu material and even delicate jamdani that looks like candyfloss.Consider renaming Ease of Doing Business as a more truthful ‘unease of doing business,’ thus focusing on reducing the complexity of dealing with the government.It is wonderful, of course, that we can pay our taxes online almost as easily as buying a book off Amazon, but our tax system is still too complex and does little to widen the tax base. In fact, the last budget arguably narrowed it by raising the income threshold for income tax.In a country as unequal as ours, we need an inheritance tax.

Most G8 countries have one.Those of us with considerable amounts of disposable income need to spend and donate more. In the spirit of Henry Ford raising wages in 1914 to raise productivity and turn factory workers into customers, we should regard paying employees more, viewing them as an investment as