A Survey Decoded

The unduly optimistic tone of Economic Survey 2025-26 jars at times. Facts not conforming to the authors' narrative are sometimes not mentioned at all, or deliberately obfuscated, an example being the chapter on India's social sector that does not bifurcate social sector expenditure between the Centre and States which would have revealed that the Centre's spending on health and education was declining in percentage terms and schemes for these saw a big decrease in budget allocation in real terms.

- DEVENDRA SAKSENA The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax.

The Economic Survey of 2016-17 summarised its desiderata in the following words: "It (Economic Survey) must possess a rare combination of gifts... No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside its regard. It must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, its authors as aloof and incorruptible as artists, yet sometimes as near to earth as politicians." Economic Survey 2016-17 went on to note that such was the popularity of the previous year's Survey that it had been pirated and was being sold on Amazon.

Publication of the Annual Economic Survey a day before the Union Budget is a much-awaited event. Offering rare insights in the Government's economic thinking and giving a snapshot of the Indian Economy, together with a SWOT analysis, every word of the Economic Survey is precious to serious students of economics.

The spirit and thinking behind the Budget can be perfectly understood by perusing the Economic Survey, because both documents are drafted by the same set of economists. Painstaking research, unbiased statistics and unmatched scholarship ensure that the Economic Survey remains of interest long after the corresponding year's Budget is forgotten.

However, Economic Survey 2022 and Economic Survey 2023 which ignored hard realities and stretched facts and logic to justify Government policies were significant exceptions. This deleterious trend was reversed in 2024 and the current Survey carries forward the change; insights and scholarship are back, the Survey is topical and does not shy away from discussing current problems, e.g., worrying levels of inflation and unemployment, slow uptick in manufacturing and exports etc.