Improving economic Management

If the purpose behind preparation of the white paper on the state of the country's economy was to identify the economic malaises and find some ways out of the current imbroglio, the follow-up by the interim government has been conspicuous by its absence. This has prompted the white paper committee and other reputed economists to gather at a symposium titled "White Paper and Thereafter: Economic Management, Reforms, and National Budget" one and a half months after the submission of that important factual and analytical document. Clearly, the head of the 12-member committee, Debapriya Bhattacharya was highly disappointed with the interim government's inaction. Other economists present at the symposium could not agree more with the observations made by him. Additionally they made their own critical observations on the slowdown of the economy in the absence of any effective and innovative policy shift or action aimed at reviving the economy. The recommendations made in the white paper have remained largely ignored until now.
This is for the first time that the country's leading economists have criticised the interim government and expressed their disappointment with its inaction. True, the economic doldrums have been a legacy of the past despotic government marked by crony capitalism and those cannot be overcome overnight. Yet this sounds like a cliché or even an excuse if there is no sign of any positive action that might at least set the tone of an economic recovery slowly but surely. The task is proving all the more daunting because of the culture of overdependence on borrowed money from multilateral agencies and the bureaucracy for expenditure of the funds received from those multilateral organisations on annual development programmes (ADP). Such dependence on Bretton Woods institutions for funds and on an outdated bureaucracy for expenditure of the allocations for ADP is contradictory to the principle of an equalitarian and discrimination-free socio-economic system. When economic recipes made a precondition for receiving loans from those multilateral institutions are accepted and complied with, nations lose their ways in the woods.
Now that the country finds enmeshed in the web of financial prescriptions from those agencies, the government should take a deep breath and be mindful of creating the nation's internal wealth. The white paper wanted the government to chart a roadmap of augmenting wealth through the optimal use of internal resources. When industries are sluggish, inflation remains untamed with that of food surpassing other commodities, the interim government's option for value-added tax and supplementary duty, considered an easy-way-out at the cost of the general public, has made 'ease of doing business' a highly daunting proposition. Confidence of investors in the economy is at rock bottom.
Accepted that the human resources development requires a long-term plan but there was ample opportunity to set the process into motion. Surprisingly, the government did not feel the need for forming a reform commission on education although it went for 10 such commissions. For sometime now, the country's diaspora and migrant workers have been sending an increasing amount of remittance to the relief of the government. Job creation in the private sector was a priority but with industries and businesses encountering a hostile environment due, on the one hand, to sharp deterioration of law and order and, on the other, a crisis of energy and a lack of policy support, employment opportunities are rather shrinking. Home-grown bold and innovative policies are needed to make good use of the country's human resources, decidedly the number one, to obviate the crises.