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After five years as the Principal Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, Sanjeev Sanyal has now been appointed as a full-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). The incoming member is a noted economist, author and columnist, and brings his nearly two decades of experience in the financial sector to the table.
Prior to his stint in the Finance Ministry, Mr. Sanyal was the Global Strategist and Managing Director at Deutsche Bank until 2015. He had studied at the Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi before moving to Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.
Mr. Sanyal was instrumental in the preparation and publishing of the Economic Survey (2021-22).
The survey document stated that India’s real GDP was expected to grow at 9.2% in 2021-22 after a contraction in the previous financial year. “Almost all indicators show that the economic impact of the ‘second wave’ in Q1 was much smaller than that experienced during the full lockdown phase in 2020-21 even though the health impact was more severe,” the document noted.
Additionally, GDP growth in FY 2022-23 is expected to be between 8.0-8.5%. The survey document stated this was because the vaccination programme had covered bulk of the population, rebuilding of the economic momentum and the likely long-term benefits of the supply-side reforms in the pipeline. He is credited with the transitioning of the Economic Survey from the previous two-volume format to a single volume format alongside a separate volume for statistical tables. He stated that although the two-volume report enabled more space for bringing in new ideas and themes, at almost 900 pages, it was becoming “unwieldy”.
He added that it was felt that thematic chapters of the Volume I were not adequately linked to the sectoral chapters of Volume 2.
Emphasis on the supply side
Mr. Sanyal, in a conversation with Elara Capital’s Chief Economist Garima Kapoor in September 2021, said that challenges to the country’s economic growth were stemming from supply constraints. He dismissed that the challenges were not because of lack of demand.
In the same interaction, the outgoing Principal Economic Adviser said that chip shortages were responsible for the declining car sales.
“The biggest problems that we are now facing in economic expansion, at least in India, is not lack of demand. It is in fact, that we have run out of chips for our automobile industry, it not that people don’t want to buy cars, we can’t produce them because we can’t procure chips,” he was quoted as saying. He added that there was no point in fuelling demand by endowing ‘Helicopter Money’ on people if the supply side is unable to respond.
The Economic Survey too noted that a distinguishing feature of the country’s response to COVID-19 and related macroeconomic conditions, was an emphasis on supply-side reforms than relying completely on managing demand. It added the supply-side reforms include deregulation of numerous sectors, simplification of processes, removal of legacy issues like ‘retrospective tax’, privatisation production-linked incentives and so on.
It also noted the increased capital spending by the Govt could be seen as both demand and supply enhancing response as it creates infrastructure capacity for future growth.
Infotainment host
The newest addition to the PM’s economic team is also the host of a television show, titled Economic Sutra, on Sansad TV. The shows have dedicated episodes on the making of an economic survey, Central Vista project, housing for all, smart cities, drone technology in India, among other topics.
In the episode on Central Vista, Mr. Sanyal described the project as part of a “wider urban thinking” that this government has bought to the table. He explained that the strategy now focussed on a more fluid urban development via targeted interventions and not rigid master plans. “The idea is not just to rejuvenate the place but look after the iconic buildings at these sites and bring them upto speed with the 21st century,” he explained.
The particular episode on the making of an economic survey explained exhaustively on the initial economic surveys — going back to 1950s where it was published as part of the budget document. He also spoke in detail about aspects of the latest economic survey and the contemporary macroeconomic conditions.
The scrutiny
Like several top government officials, Mr. Sanyal too has been subjected to scrutiny for a potential leaning.
The scrutiny was aggravated with him coming in defence of author Vikram Sampath, who was embroiled in a plagiarism row surrounding his latest book Savarkar: A Contested Legacy. He said the evidence against him was too weak. He argued that the text in question was from Mr. Sampath’s speech at India Foundation in 2017 – where Mr. Sanyal was also a speaker. Further, he stated, the scholars from whom the text were allegedly stolen were mentioned by Mr. Sampath in the references with one of them even reviewing his work. The economist concluded saying, “...This is just a smear campaign against @vikramsampath by the same old Left cabal who cannot tolerate the fact that their carefully constructed narrative is collapsing. If this is the best they can do against Vikram, they really have no legs to stand on.”
In February 2021, the incoming member had tweeted a video of Prime Minister Modi’s speech putting forth a case for the private sector in India. He said, referring to himself, that it was no small thing for someone who grew up in CPI (M) leader and former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s reign. Mr. Sanyal tweeted that he lived to see an Indian Prime Minister making an unapologetic pitch for the country’s private sector.
He is the author of The Indian Renaissance, The Ocean of Churn, The Land of Seven Rivers, among others.
Mr. Sanyal is also a well-known urban theorist and environmentalist, with special focus on the economics of cities.
