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This is an archive article published on November 3, 2002

Break away from the past, FM tells economists

Finance minister Jaswant Singh on Saturday urged economists to look into the need for a fresh model for assessing economic growth, breaking ...

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Finance minister Jaswant Singh on Saturday urged economists to look into the need for a fresh model for assessing economic growth, breaking away from the ‘yardsticks of yesterday’.

In his address after releasing a book ‘Macroeconomics and monetary policy: Issues for a Reforming Economy’, edited by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Y.V. Reddy and S.S. Tarapore, Singh remarked that the book covered issues of reforming economy that the last decade has experienced.

‘‘At the other end of the spectrum of economic science,’’ though, Singh said he was perplexed by the question ‘‘whether we are continuing to assess the Indian economy … based on the fixities of yesterday.’’ He said the country had witnessed the most serious drought in decades. He felt that the standard model of economic growth saw a close link between agriculture production and industrial production.

However, agriculture now constituted less than 25 per cent of the GDP, he pointed out, even though it still provided 65 per cent employment. So far the scale of farm output has been “an insightful guide” to the main harvest, but “the question arises is whether any distinction is valid any more between rabi and kharif,” he added. He said so far there was no indication that the monsoon was having an adverse impact on other indicators.

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