What exactly is the economic survey and what it means for you?
The Budget of Modi 2.0 government is going to present on July 5, and a day before the same; the economic survey will be tabled in parliament. While most of us will be focussed on the Budget, another equally important aspect, that is the Economic Survey, is often sidelined. But, the Economic Survey has an equally important role to play here.
Let’s take a look:
The economic survey is presented every year since 1950
There are many ways to know the state of economy, but Economic Survey is the most authoritative version of the state of the economy.
It’s generally presented in Parliament a day before the presentation of the annual Budget.
It acts as a precursor to the budget and it is referred to as the fundamental premise against, which the budget is presented.
The Economic Survey does not have any fixed style and it changes from year to year. But first chapter of Economic Survey is dedicated to an overview of the economy and give you a glimpse that how the economy is fairing.
It will answer the certain questions in the first chapter such as how many people are paying taxes? What is the export situation is like? Has farmer income gone up? Or our social schemes are working well on ground? Is these things are having any impact on GDP?
Thus Economic Survey intends to breakdown things in order to give you holistic view of the Indian economy.
It does not confine only to the numbers and data and also speaks about some important issues like climate change and gender-gap, that’s why 2018-2019 surveys was pink in colour to give a signal for the need of gender neutral policies.
The Economic Survey also Comments on Policy change required. Successive Chief Economic Advisors have done the same in the past.
For instance the Former CEA Arvind Subramanian mooted the idea of Universal Basic Income in economic Survey in 2018-2019. And he called the Idea of UBI as radical new vision.
As the Idea of UBI was not implemented. Thus it means that it’s not mandatory for the government to adhere to all the policy suggestions in Economic survey. Thus this document serves as a policy guide.
The Chief Economic advisor in Finance Ministry authors economic Survey.
This year KV Subramanian will table the Economic Survey of new Modi government
An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta, KV Subramanian, completed his PhD in financial economics from Chicago Booth School Of Economics.
This Economic Survey might throw light on two most talked-about issues; one is GDP growth and second unemployment. As the concerns were raised about both the data, so there is hope that Economic Survey will discuss these two issues.
This economic survey will be the first one presented by KV Subramanian, so for sure he would want to leave some imprint like his predecessors Arvind Subramanian, Raghuram Rajan.
Finally, The Economy survey will be out in some time and it would be definitely interesting to see the first economic survey under Modi 2.0.