Time To Transform The Dwarfs Into Giants

M. Govinda Rao, Member, 14th Finance Commission; Ajit Ranade, President & Chief Economist, Aditya Birla Group; Yoginder K. Alagh, former Union minister; Arun Kumar, former JNU economist; and Abhijit Sen, former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, debate on the finer points of the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Edited excerpts

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Do you think the Union Budget provides a roadmap for making India a $5-trillion economy by 2024?

M. GOVINDA RAO (MGR): The roadmap for achieving the $5-trillion economy can’t be given in the Budgets entirely. The Budgets are signalling instruments and the actual major reforms have to be implemented during the course of the year. Unfortunately, even as a signalling device, this Budget has not been successful. The most important issue now is to revive the investment climate and there is not much in the Budget to address this.

AJIT RANADE (AR): It is an ambitious and audacious goal. But it will need faster growth than what we saw in the past five years. The Budget does highlight a big push in infrastructure, which will enable higher growth in the medium to long term. But clearly the bigger immediate contribution is going to be required from the private sector. And that needs more reforms, and specific enabling measures. The roadmap should also be broken up into short-term milestones, and set up into sectorial targets. For instance, export targets in textiles and clothing, in agro-processing. The roadmap will also need the government to privatise in a bigger way.

YOGINDER ALAGH (YA): The $5-trillion economy is a statement of intentions. Like doubling of agricultural incomes, good intentions, but requires work on a strongly normative scenario of growth. This will need a strong planning agency. The Planning Commission had been abolished and the successor Niti Aayog does not have allocation powers and limited access to the ministries for internal data. It can be debated if there is at least a working paper on it.