Suraj wrote:Arjun: You make it sound as if everyone blissfully expected 9% growth and suddenly woke up startled "5% ?? OMG! What's the meaning of this ? Why did no one predict it ?!"
Ummm, yes. I make it sound that way because that's exactly what I am saying. And this is less to do with individuals and more to do with models that have been touted as fundamental for determining growth. The whole point of having economic models (ICOR, savings rate yada yada) is for their predictive power. And if they fail in their core purpose - and morover fail for several quarters in a row by huge margins of difference, its either time to junk them or to refine them with new parameters that have a better fit with the data.
Where is this feedback loop ? If even after 7 / 8 quarters of disappointment some basic economic shibboleths haven't been re-examined and questioned, when would it ever happen ?
Why don't you present your own data instead of just rhetoric bashing the incumbent govt or denigrating a neighboring country ? Various people have posted everything from GDP data from CSO, to IIP, inflation and other stats. I suggest you too put forth more economic details rather than just post rhetoric.
I don't see the point. If you think I am interested in rhetorically bashing the government you completely misunderstand me.
Just so we are clear, let me make explicit what I AM interested in-
1. Maximizing GDP growth is for me, the #1 economic priority of the government (obviously I am of the Bhagvati school)
2. Finding out after 5 years on the basis of 5-year multi-year trend averages, that our economic growth sucked and that we've lost ground to Bangladesh or others is NOT the least bit interesting to me, nor is it useful for most course-correction purposes.
3. What I am interested in is in identifying leading indicators (as opposed to lagging ones) that can predict the possibility of growth slowdown ahead of time or at least concurrently - so appropriate course-correction can be attempted. Business Confidence levels, Fiscal deficit, Trade imbalance, investment rate are some potentially useful leading indicators. If there are others - those would certainly be of interest.
4. Of these leading indicators, identify the ones that can indeed by controlled by the government. Eg if there are global market factors at play that may result in slowdown - that's useful to know but the government may be able to do little in such circumstance
5. Having identified the final factors that are in the hands of the government, evaluate individual leaders or parties on their performance or ability to deliver on these parameters
6. Champion whichever party / leader comes out best on the basis of this evaluation. And if this means 'bashing the incumbent government' to use your terminology - then so be it.
To me all of the above is pretty much what would constitute an insightful and relevant economics thread - rather than just acting as a compendium for data, which would seem to be your goal.
If Bangladesh manages 6% average growth each year, they have rightfully earned praise; there's no need to treat a comparison to them as a pejorative as in 'we can't even grow faster than Bangladesh'.
Absolutely they would have rightfully earned praise. But my primary interest, Suraj - in that situation would be to identify why India has not been able to perform better, and focus on whether we have the right policies and leadership in place.
Your focus seems to be to act as some kind of spectator of events as they unfold - whereas my focus is on evaluating whether we have the right policies and leadership in place to be able to compete and make a concrete difference to the lives of millions in India.
Let's have some perspective here and not get ahead of ourselves. We're all just a bunch of interested people posting about assorted current affairs topics on Seetal's website. If you'd like to effect a change, just follow Rahul Mehta's example and join politics yourself. 
