Raghuram Rajan’s back office
Every chief economic adviser leaves his or her own imprimatur; Raghuram Rajan is no different
Not only was his Economic Survey: 2012-13 more concise than previous efforts, it reintroduced a chapter on jobs—a critical parameter in the current scenario.
Even better, Rajan has gone that extra mile to showcase his back office.
While the actual copy of the Survey did include a formal note crediting his team, Rajan has used the seamless nature of the Web to carry bios of the entire team, which includes several consultant economists of some academic pedigree. The Economic Survey is the collation of inputs from across the government, which is then painstakingly analysed and pieced together in the final document.
Rajan’s immediate predecessor, Kaushik Basu, had a penchant for coming up with unique covers that were drawn from his first love, microeconomic theory. Rajan has kept up the tradition, but focused instead on the macroeconomy and argued that India, like the South-East Asian Tigers, still has a chance to get back on the right growth trajectory.
Lazier chief economic advisers have often just reproduced the previous year’s format with the mandatory updates. Presumably, Rajan is the beginning of a new chapter in North Block.
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