Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser, Finance Ministry, on Thursday said academics and experts tend to stay on the right side of power — whether in the RBI or the government — and called for a wider and critical debate of government policies.
Delivering the sixth Raj Bhavan Dr. V.K.R.V. Memorial lecture on ‘Competence, Truth and Power: Macro-economic Commentary in India’ at the Raj Bhavan here, he said public interest was better served by a richer debate.
“Before policy decisions are announced, experts tend to express the views they think officials are likely to take. After policy actions, they try hard to endorse the decisions already taken. As a result, we in the government do not benefit from their wisdom. This is a serious problem, because high-quality policy-making demands high-quality inputs and high-quality debates,” he said.
Mr. Subramanian said all officialdom wants validation of government actions/policy decisions. “There is a clear relationship between expert analysis and official decisions. Before policy decisions, the expert analysis is often illuminating. But once the decisions are taken, it is truly striking how the tune and tone of the analysis changes. Analysts fall over backwards to rationalise the official decision.”
Objective assessment
Mr. Subramanian claimed that experts often hold back their objective assessment. “They censor themselves, and in public fora are insufficiently critical and independent of officialdom — whether the officials are in Mumbai or Delhi.” Instead of criticising official decisions, as consistency would demand, analysts find ex-post logic to attribute merit to government decisions, particularly the RBI for holding rates constant over the past three announcements, he said.
Diversity of opinion
Mr. Subramanian said the country requires diversity of opinion. “That diversity will require both competence and capability. It will require voices that are not silenced, compromised, or conveniently moderated by the lure or fear of power.”
Noting decline in the quality of higher education across the board in the country, he said: “We need more disinterested voices — especially universities and independent researchers that are distant from and not dependent upon the apparatus of power — to speak up.”
