The Department of Humanities and Social Sciences hosted a talk on “Economic Survey 2016-17: How India Surprises” by Dr. Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor, Govt. of India. This much anticipated talk started at 3 p.m. with a full house in the Central Lecture Theater in IIT Madras on 31 March , 2017.
Dr. Subramanian began the talk by sharing his experiences as the Chief Economic Advisor and the responsibilities he has as a policy maker. Further, he discussed about the Economics Survey 2016-17 and the challenges he faced while preparing this.
Later on, he discussed about the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and said that it is one of the most transformational tax reform that has taken place in India and also implementation of GST indicates that India is now becoming more and more co-operative federal structure where the center and the state governments get together and discuss about lots of things.
Further he talked about the JAM (short for Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) trinity which refers to the government of India initiative to link Jan Dhan accounts, Mobile numbers and Aadhar cards of Indians and said that it is the most exciting thing happening in Indian economy because it will plug the leakages of government subsidies.
About the effect of demonetisation on the Indian economy he said that because of the lack of data from informal sector it is difficult to comment about it.
He also discussed about the use of big data in this year Economic Survey and how they helped to figure out the actual number of Internal migration and Internal trade which is completely different from the previous numbers and demonstrated a comparison between India and China trade to GDP ratio in which it is evident that after 2009 financial crisis India has overtaken China in terms of trade to GDP ratio.
Dr. Subramanian concluded his lecture with the discussion about Universal Basic Income and said that it is de jure universal but de facto quasi- Universal.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
“Dr. Arvind Subramanian is Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and supposedly the 39th most powerful person in India.
He is a widely cited expert on the economics of India, China, and the changing balance of global economic power. His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance was published in September 2011. Foreign Policy magazine has named him as one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers in 2011. India Today named him one of the top 30 thinkers over the last 30 years.
He also served at the GATT (1988–92) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (1999–2000) and at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies (2008–10).
He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi; his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India; and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford, UK.”
-By Arvind Kumar
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