The government will table the Economic Survey 2025-26, an annual report on the economic health of the country, on Thursday ahead of the Budget on 1 February. Apart from being the report card for economic performance of the country during the financial year, the survey, of late, has also doubled up as a document for bold forward looking policy ideas for the government.
At a time when the finance ministry has declared the present macro-economic situation as ‘goldilocks period’ of high growth and low inflation, the Economic Survey report on Thursday should not shy away from prescribing any bitter pills, if needed.
In his last year’s Economic Survey report, chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran has advocated driving economic growth through deregulations.
“That means rolling back regulation significantly. That means vowing and acting to stop micromanaging economic activity and embracing risk-based regulations. That means changing the operating principle of regulations from ‘guilty until proven innocent’ to ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ said the survey last year. This year, the survey report should give a status check on the efforts the government made towards this goal.
The survey had a chapter on artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for employment. But it did not answer the question on AI’s effect on jobs in the country. Some answers are due in this year's report.
The survey comes at a time when India finally clinched a trade deal with the EU, bringing some hope for exporters wilting under the punitive 50% tariff from the US. It should come up with some ideas for the government to shield the export sector from the adverse impact of adversarial US policies, especially at a time when the industry is hoping for big customs duty reforms.
The economy has shown resilience amid a very fluid geopolitical situation, but it is not out of the woods, think analysts and economists. “The domino effects of a new emerging order of realpolitik, still largely opaque, yet frightening, cascading down the annals of global financial markets with misplaced trust being the lynchpin of rout across stretched equities and bond markets,” the economists at SBI summarise the current situation.
Therefore, it will be interesting to see if the Economic Survey report concurs with the ‘Goldilocks Period’ assessment of the government.