Economic Survey primer

The Survey had a series of short notes on economic policy issues. A few of them are excerpted below:

On Fiscal consolidation 

• Advanced countries have embraced fiscal activism, giving a greater role to counter-cyclical policies and attaching less weight to curbing the debt stock. But, India’s experience has taught opposite lessons
• India’s fiscal stance has an in-built bias toward higher deficits, because spending rises pro-cyclically during growth surges, while revenue and spending are deployed counter-cyclically during slumps
• It (India's experience) has reaffirmed the need for rules to contain activism, so as to rein in excessive spending during booms and inordinate deficits during downturns, a pattern that contributed to both recent episodes of severe macroeconomic instability (1991 and 2013)