It is time to shed economic orthodoxy and take bold decisions to pull the national economy out of the “deep depression” into which it appears to be headed, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said.
Dr. Singh was speaking online on Monday after releasing the book Kerala and the World Economy published by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) here to mark its 50th anniversary.
“Unless firm and quick measures are taken at the national level to stimulate demand, as we did so effectively in 2008 in the wake of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis, I am afraid still darker times are ahead of us. This is the time to shed economic orthodoxy and take bold decisions that will pull the national economy out of the deep depression to which it seems inexorably headed,” Dr. Singh said.
Downward spiral
At the national level, the economy has been on a downward spiral for two years even before the pandemic struck. COVID-19 and its devastating effect on the poor, both in terms of employment and incomes, had further aggravated India’s problems, he said.
Kerala today faced challenges that it had to overcome as quickly as possible, Dr. Singh said. The growing trend towards protectionism and the hardening of national borders through increasing tariff and non-tariff barriers, steep decline in economic activity, plunging prices of energy sources, growing restrictions on movement of skilled and unskilled labour — all these pose global threats which Kerala had to bravely confront, he said.
‘Key addition’
Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac received the first copy. “ Kerala and the World Economy is an important addition to our body knowledge, as it brings together certain recent aspects of Kerala’s interface with the rest of the world such as international trade, commercial agriculture, migration and remittances,” he said.
K.M. Chandrasekhar, chairman, CDS governing body, presided.
Frances Stewart, Professor Emeritus of Development Economics, University of Oxford; Robin Jeffrey, National University of Singapore; M.A. Oommen, Honorary Fellow, CDS; former CDS director K.P. Kannan; and Tirthankar Roy, Professor, London School of Economics; and CDS director Sunil Mani; spoke.
