The Union government may fail to meet its fiscal deficit target in the current financial year. That, however, is not the real concern. You could trust the ingenuity of the finance ministry mandarins to finally present a fiscal deficit figure for 2017-18 that will not be much higher than the target of 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The real concerns, however, will remain. And these will be the underlying revenue trends, an overall trajectory of widening deficits of the Centre as well as the states and the dangers of a worsening quality of expenditure.

(Business Standard)