Economic Survey: Of mud, money and readability

The style and format of Economic Survey 2016-17 is fictional in flair and profound in substance

In the preface to the Economic Survey 2016-17, Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian sets a tall ambition — his team’s work should be read by more.

He says the Survey, in its style and format, even runs the risk that it “might be consigned to the ranks of popular fiction.” Subramanian and his team, responding to the criticism faced last year, have used less economic jargon, more tables and charts, and made an attempt to situate itself in the immediate present.

But, the Survey might disappoint many eagerly waiting for more comparative numbers. The CEA left them hanging by saying a second volume of the Survey will come in “summer”.

This year’s Survey attempts to be prosaic and profound. It has a bagful of ideas and blueprints for the future but is also reflective on mistakes. There are marked departures, in the way it sheds the sectoral approach of its earlier avatars and adopts a thematic approach. 

Instead, chapters on “live” issues that have occupied public imagination in recent months — such as demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST) — increase the Survey’s readability. For example, there is no chapter on agriculture in the Survey’s 14 chapters. 

The word agriculture figures 41 times in the 335 pages, against 95 times in the 2015-16 Survey. Subramanian says for the Survey not to have discussed some of the short-term developments, like Brexit or demonetisation would have risked it being “Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.”

As for the inspiration to come up with a more readable Survey, the CEA blames the “brazen pirating” of the previous Survey on e-commerce platform Amazon. To “entice the reader”, the team even has a listicle on “eight interesting facts about India”, with charts and graphs. 

Subramanian says it is for the first time the Survey has embraced ‘Big Data’ to come up with the “first estimate” of the flow of goods across states and also furnishes “exciting new evidence” on the flows of migrants. The annual work-related migration in India nine million, twice what the 2011 Census had estimated. It also says “India trades more than China and a lot within itself”.

It has new estimates on the efficacy of the targeting of major current programmes and its big idea is a dedicated chapter, a first, on providing a universal basic income (UBI). It quotes Mahatma Gandhi to conclude he would have preferred UBI. 

The CEA uses several quotes from economist John Maynard Keynes and several Indian thinkers such as B R Ambedkar, Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhi. A chapter questions Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialist-era economic planning. But, there isn’t a reference to Deen Dayal Upadhyay, the pre-eminent Sangh Parivar ideologue. Even actor Raj Kapoor and author Aravind Adiga find mention.

The chapter on demonetisation has a quote from Ramakrishna Paramhansa: Taka mati, mati taka (Money is mud, mud is money). Paramhansa was the guru of Narendra Nath Datta, better known as Swami Vivekananda, and the PM was named after him. 

The Survey bemoans the lack of competitive federalism among states but counts the shift of Tata Nano manufacturing plant from Bengal to Gujarat as one of its best examples. That had happened nearly a decade ago when Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat.

Economic Survey ‘16-17

335 pages, 14 chapters

Thematic approach, not sectoral

More readable

Companion volume on data by July

Chapter on Universal Basic Income

'Big Data' on migrations, movement of goods