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A SHORT COMMUNICATION: ECONOMIC MANDARIN! WHO Author – Aditya Prasad SahooAffiliation – KIIT UniversityDesignation – PhD Research ScholarEmail – adityasahoo007@Recently in Delhi considering the economic downturn the minister of finance has concluded his consultation towards different measures. The consensus was that the economy is on right path. The statement issued may be syntaxes as, bumper harvest but higher food grain prices, more power but low industrial output, higher exports but no let-up in trade deficit, higher investment but low growth. It is truly an Orwellian situation that calls for a totally new language – a kind of economic newspeak- for communication.If the public sector cannot generate its own resources and must be kept alive through forcible feeding, why not do away with it? If higher taxes do not result in higher collection of revenue, why not try lowering taxes? Jay Dubashi wonders why any economist present did not raise such question? He might as well have, in Chagrin, called them, mandarins, but for countries.Orwell wrote in his famous essay, ‘Inside the whale’, “progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly there is nothing left but quietism robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it. Get inside the whale or rather admit that you are inside the whale. Give yourself over to the world process, stop fighting against it or pretending that you control it, simply accept it, endure it, and record it.”1. The Art of Policy Making Our politicians and economists have been inside the whale for long, they do not know or do not admit they are inside it. Economic policy making has run berserk in India. It is any better elsewhere? The ill is in the remedy. Economics is a science of wealth or allocation of scarce resources for the largest common good. Most probably Ruskin linked economics, on its birth with dentistry, reliving us perhaps of the bad tooth the origin of pain. Economics from its innocence dentistry to its perspective economic management has had a random walk. Has the science gone foul, or the drug administered as remedy has watered down in quality?These are quite complex questions for a straight reply. But we have no escape from economic management. The state in India controls and manages directly over 75 percent of resources and indirectly regulates the other 25 percent. We must find where we can mend or reinforce rather than give up policy making. We may rather change the style of seeking and tendering advice. Inadequately of advice may apparently give a false impression of wrong advice.In both Britain and USA (the biggest users of economic advisers) has economic policy making emerged on to sunlit plateau? That would not be consistent with the nature of the problems being tackled; it would require a society in which the economy and other goals were fixed, perfectly compatible with one another and agreed on by all sections of population. Mere acceptance of responsibility for economic, management, of course, is on guarantee of success in caring out those responsibilities. Many of the tools of management have betrayed in adequacy.2. Political trade cycles: One that impedes economic understanding and action is ideology. It can be overcome. We must devise tools to show the gap between reality and intention on one hand and practical and economic comfort on the other. We must remove myth by significant debate on the value choices still facing the industrial societies. Economic techniques may pose new hazards. As for example, Keynesian techniques would create political cycles; economic management would become a modern form of gerrymandering as politicians strove to create short-term economic conditions favourable to electoral success. There are attempts to prove that economic system is automatic and must remain free of intervention to produce the most expedient and just results. But such freedom is impossible.3. Economics is not Truth:We have entered an era of extensive state involvement in economic affairs and of continuous and detailed economic management. It is not a question of ‘whether’ should or should not state have power, but how those powers can be used for consciously chosen ends. Centralised control regulation and direction exit. They are mostly negative decisions as to hoe certain functions should be ordered so as not to frustrate the attainment of other goals.The government extends responsibilities. The areas of extended responsibilities compel government to seek advice, consent and cooperation even compulsive participation of main producer groups. Economics is not a body of certain truth, but an engine for the discoveries for truth (Marshall). The ‘wrong’ decisions can be made under any system, but it is only possible to learn for failures when decisions are based on explicit assumptions and criteria. The new quantitative methods for appraising the government activities mark an important step forward in the process of bringing economics to bear on policy formulation. The best security against misuse of techniques is to incorporate larger number of those with knowledge of techniques of economics and management into all sectors of the government policy making machinery. The findings of such experts should be subjected to public scrutiny and debates.4. The Big Gap:Till World War 2 a wide gulf existed between academic experts and government decision makers. Those who wished to contribute to policy questions by way of analysis or advice did so by writing books, pamphlets, memoranda for official enquiries and newspaper articles. They relied on influencing fellow economists, general public and general diffusion of knowledge to invoke response and at least recognition of the presence of other ways or opinions. Keynes followed the same path when he made a statement in 1939 on academic –governmental lack of rapport of exchanges in such terms as ‘the thinking of practical man or some academic scribbler’. He could cut down the lag between his work and policy by immediately being invited to take a seat in Treasury parlour.For three decades to follow and thence the nature of relationship has improved. Large number of economics has now acquired enough experience of governmental service. To an extent, in our country also the situation has improved through not quite so. The self-appointed adviser and analyst working through the public media of communication from academic institutions have a listener inside the government. So, one does not speak to the walls.In India as in UK economic advisers for that matter expert on management are first and foremost civil servants. They are faceless, anonymous and so not identifiable with specific policy recommendations. They have a protective shield of government cadre security of tenure in the department in which they serve. On the other hand, in USA president has adviser with a catholic, not a parochial, approach to economic policy an “undivided loyalty rather than a competing loyalty”. Influences come through personal relationship with president, neither UK nor USA guarantee acceptance of advice.Deafness to advice is the prerogative of political decision makers in all systems. The civil servant-economist in India is an enigma. They are in a limbo. They shy away from open politics on one hand and wrap up civil service anonymity on the other. What is required is a sort of Economic Committee where position on an issue would be joined. Planning Commission is not a proper substitute. Experts should be taken out of comparative coolness of university life to share the excitement and heat of political kitchen by alternating between the roles of academic critic and counsellor of government policy. In addition, academic experts on business management should supplement economic analysis. 5. Role of Academicians:For most part men in universities or economic research centres in India must appeal or persuade the policy makers through writing articles in newspapers and voicing views through the mass media or debates, because at the state level the communication is fettered or constrained. The economists or subject experts of university or research centres at the national level have a scanty recognition and participants as advisers in policy making or implementing.It is common sense that experts may contribute substantively to decision making, but it takes most uncommon sense and wisdom to know on the part of government to which part of the muddled nations that common sense lies, a problem. On our part, we, academicians must be ready with an answer. Have we got the necessary wares to take up the advising or we want a mandarinate? ................
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