NEW DELHI: NITI Aayog vice chairman Rajiv Kumar on Thursday made a strong case for extraordinary steps to deal with the unprecedented stress in the country’s financial sector, which is a key reason for the growth slowdown, but the government’s chief economic adviser (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian said any bailout package will be a “moral hazard” and anathema to way a market economy works.Kumar said such a situation had not been witnessed in the past 70 years and called for urgent steps to reverse the situation as the entire financial sector was under threat. “Nobody is trusting anybody else... within the private sector nobody is ready to lend, everyone is sitting on cash...you may have to take steps which are extraordinary,” Kumar said at an event, adding that measures have been unveiled in the budget to push growth. He blamed the indiscriminate lending by banks between 2009 and 2014 as the reason for the stress in the financial sector.But CEA Subramanian seemed to differ with Kumar’s views on providing a stimulus to accelerate growth. “Since 1991 we are a market economy, and in a market economy there are sectors which go on sunrise and then go through sunset phase,” Subramanian said.“If we basically expect the government to use taxpayers’ money to intervene every time when there are some ‘sunsets,’ then I think you introduce possible moral hazards from ‘too big to fail’ and as well as the possibility of a situation where profits are private and losses are socialised, which is basically an anathema to way the market economy functions,” CEA said.The slowdown in the economy has prompted India Inc to call for a stimulus from the government to boost growth and prevent job losses. The automobile sector has been hit sharply by the slowdown and several companies have cut production and laid off temporary workers due to the demand slowdown.Power secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said cutting interest rates and making credit available to the private sector were better tools rather than injecting a fiscal stimulus, which had the potential to crowd out money from the financial markets. Garg, a former finance secretary, said the first quarter GDP growth numbers are likely to be lower due to the impact of general elections economic activity.“I think the sentiment will change, we need to take a very careful decision... We have a problem with the rate mechanism,” Garg said. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) will unveil the April-June quarter GDP growth numbers next week and expectations are that it will display signs of a slowdown.Rajiv Bajaj, MD of Bajaj Auto , said industry should look at their own shortcomings before demanding a fiscal stimulus. “I agree it is a difficult time, but a drop of 5% to 7% sales can’t be called a crisis,” Bajaj told a TV channel“If I tell my employees that when the going is tough, I am going to throw you out, than how would my employees trust me? It’s a double-speak. Salary of employees is just 4% of sales, so is it justified to throw your employees for such small saving? Bajaj said and cautioned against any fear mongering.Read this story in Marathi