-Newsclick.in After economic liberalisation, barring a brief hiatus, the growth rate has scarcely moved up compared with earlier, with manufacturing -- the sector that counts most -- often logging lower growth than before. The “gross domestic product” (GDP) is a concept rooted in an epistemic position which is intrinsically incapable of recognising the existence of a “surplus” in society. A simple example will make this clear. Suppose we have an agrarian economy...

-Livemint.com ARVind Subramanian’s conclusions about GDP growth figures are in the right direction. There’s no point being in denial ARVind Subramanian was the chief economic advisor (CEA) to the Government of India from October 2014 to June 2018. Among other things, he became well known and was praised deservingly for his Economic Surveys. He made that document interesting, useful and accessible. He also took it to the country by hosting online lectures...

-The Hindu The new GDP series has some methodological and sampling problems Former Chief Economic Adviser ARVind Subramanian recently claimed in a paper that India’s GDP growth from 2011-12 to 2016-17 was likely to have been overestimated. The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has rejected this claim, stating that his paper would “not stand the scrutiny of academic or policy research standards”. In a conversation moderated by T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan, Pronab Sen...

-The Hindu ‘Lacks vigour, won’t stand up to scrutiny’ The Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) has released a detailed note enumerating its objections to former Chief Economic Adviser ARVind Subramanian’s paper on India’s GDP growth. The note said that Mr. Subramanian’s paper “lacks rigour” and would not stand up to academic scrutiny. Lower GDP The paper, released in HARVard University, postulated that the GDP growth between 2011-17 was significantly lower than the 7%...

In a recent blog post, Columbia University professor ARVind Panagariya mentions that the critics of the present Prime Minister of India failed to underscore ‘employment rate’ -- flip side of unemployment rate -- that stood at nearly 94 percent according to the report on Periodic Labour Force Survey 2017-18. A recent article by Dr. Vikas Rawal and Prachi Bansal, however, points out that in order to understand the problem of joblessness...