India can't afford to become a welfare state ...yet!

India needs to become economically sound before it attempts to be come a Welfare state. Health Care, Food Security are excellent initiatives. But the timing is questionable. Our Macro-Economic situation does not allow such populist albeit necessary policies to be rolled out at this fragile fiscal juncture. I agree when our Economist PM says "Indians are spending too much on unproductive assets". We spend on Imported electronics, Gold (Which is more a burden on the economy at this point even if a month ago it seemed like a good investment). To put it in simple terms India imports much more than it can afford and exports much less than its' potential. This causes a Balance of Trade problem. Fiscal Deficit at over 4% is a big worry (Remember Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Finance Minister rang alarm bells as Finance minister in 1991 when fiscal deficit was at 2.5% of GDP). We are doing worse than all other developing nations. FII's have pulled out and don't want to come in till the 2014 elections are over. It is the same case with FDI. So we're low on Forex income, we won't sell our Gold, we can't control the runaway inflation, and we certainly won't curtail Government expense and propose an 'operation hair shirt' (to quote Humphrey Appelby) to reign in our Government budget. Parliament costs us 2 Crores a day - nothing gets done. The stock markets are on life support - they don't know whether to react to the overtures of the RBI and the Finance Minister or react to the plummeting Rupee. We are having to spend more than ever on our Defence budget and, excuse the expression, homeland security budget thanks to incursions by our neighbours (heck even Myanmar crossed our borders today), and the Maoist insurgents, all thanks to our toothless foreign policy and impotent policies of the Home ministry. And now that the Government keeps on introducing populist policies which will cost the exchequer Lakhs of Crores every year, there is no scope of implementing the tough fiscal measures that the Government knows that it ought to implement. America was one of the first countries to be hit by the global recession - it's back on it's feet...it's currency is strong and it's economy is looking up, even though it's rate of unemployment is still high....it's getting there. When will our Government wake up and remedy our Economic problems which have hit every strata of the society? Or do they really want us to wait for the 2014 elections for another Government to pull us out of this economic inferno?