Decoding Economic Policy in India: The Transition from ‘Welfare Provision’ to ‘Welfare Production’

Abdur Rashid Ahmed

Abstract


Abstract

‘Viksit Bharat@2047’ is the prime vision of India. Achieving it India needs to reconsider the entire economic policy landscape for appropriate and adequate regulation of her economy because regulation and guiding towards proper direction is the most important functions of economic policy in a country. Economic policies are operational frameworks and tools of strategies to influence the economy. In India, these policies play distributive, allocative and stabilizing role to regulate the dynamics of Indian economy. Each of the economic policies targets a distinct aspect of the economy to regulate the economy where most of indicators are again interconnected. The policy landscape in the country includes a wide range of monetary and fiscal policies, various developmental policies, unemployment schemes, trade policy, industrial policy, agricultural policy, health policy, social welfare policies, and export-import policies, among others. But compared to these traditional objectives, the role of economic policy has undergone through huge transformation extending its role to capacity building of the economy. Besides, there is necessity of the transition of functional role of economic policy considering the facts of drastic global economic changes including evolution of AI (artificial intelligence), other technological disruption, climate change, and population explosion. These changing contours can be observed in the various Union Budgets of India because budget is often considered as a mirror image of economic policy. Thus the major objective of the study is to analyze the budgetary priorities over the period since independence examining historical data and map the policy objectives through various union budgets to map the major targets understanding the shifting roles of economic policy in India.   

Keywords: Viksit Bharat@2047, Economic policy, distributive, allocative and stabilizing role, union budget, India.

JEL Classification:    G28, H30, H50, H60


Keywords


Viksit Bharat@2047; Economic policy; distributive, allocative and stabilizing role; union budget; India

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