Can the Economic Survey smoothen our path to Viksit Bharat?

livemint.com:

The Economic Survey for 2023-24 placed before Parliament on Monday is forthright on some aspects. Its straight talk on the need for private companies to use the profits they’ve piled up, thanks partly to a tax cut, to invest in India is an example. The hypocrisy of the rich world in expecting us to start phasing out fossil fuels at this juncture of the economy’s emergence is also squarely dealt with, especially the “Alice in Wonderland" air around some global plans.

Of near-term relevance is its pointed reminder that job generation is a task for India’s private sector, which must take up the investment baton from the government. While corporate profits have multiplied since the 2019 tax rate cut, private money has been invested too slowly, especially in machinery, intellectual property and the like. Although the survey paints a stable and bright picture of the economy overall, and spies signs of a revival in private capex, it also seems to bear some anxiety over the Centre having to prematurely rein back capital spending to reduce its fiscal deficit.

Written by the Centre’s chief economic adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran and his team, the survey’s macro outline of India’s economy is along expected lines. Growth is projected at 6.5-7% in 2024-25 on the high base of an 8.2% expansion logged in 2023-24.

In the context of a troubled global economy, this pace is impressive. Yet, unless rapid growth also creates good jobs in large volumes, it could lose popular appeal as a tracker of success. By the survey’s estimates, almost 7.9 million new non-farm jobs are needed each year.