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What is the importance of the White Paper on Indian Economy?
Dear Reader,
What is the importance of the White Paper on Indian Economy released by the government yesterday, 8 February?
Of course, it tells us about the state of the economy when Narendra Modi came to power in May 2014. But there’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know. The NPAs, the policy paralysis in the UPA years, the scams, and the massively skewed spend on consumption rather than creating productive assets between 2004-14. All of this has been written about and discussed and analysed and universally criticised.
Why then is the government and especially the Finance Minister spending so much time on discussing all of that once again?
I would hazard a guess and say that the Modi government wants to drive home the value of NOT making bad decisions.
While we can debate on the extent to which any government can directly benefit the economy, the ability of a government to ruin an economy is beyond doubt. Thus, NOT making bad decisions becomes more important than making the right ones.
Perhaps that is the implicit message of the White Paper—the value of NOT making mistakes as economic policy.
The entire document is more than 50 pages long but you only need to read our coverage of it to get its import.
Arush Tandon
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