Ramaswami: Most people are agreed that the 2020-21 budget has done nothing to stimulate demand and hence to counter the unemployment problem which today is much worse than it has been for nearly half a century. But the need for taxing capitalists to overcome this crisis is seen by very few. Some would go so far as to concede the need for a larger fiscal deficit, but a fiscal deficit, while overcoming deficiency of demand, puts wealth gratuitously in the hands of the capitalists and the well-to-do, in the form of claims upon the government. Growing wealth inequality however fundamentally threatens democracy; government spending, financed by wealth taxation, takes away this wealth. It does not leave the capitalists and the well-to-do any poorer than they were initially, ie, before the tax-cum-spending policy was introduced; but it works towards overcoming the crisis. It would however be too much to expect the Modi government to understand this.