Effort was to make Economic Survey look like Big B blockbuster: CEA

NEW DELHI: Adding colour to an otherwise dull and dry Economic Survey, its lead author Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian today said the endeavour was to make it look like an Amitabh Bachchan blockbuster with "some drama, some tragedy and some comedy".

"Amitabh Bachchan more colourfully says issme drama hona chahiye, tragedy hona chahiye, comedy hona chahiye, saab kuch hona chahiye and that's what the Survey I think tried to do," he said in a lighter vein while talking about the voluminous 335-page document on state of the Indian economy.

The Oxford-educated economist pointed to a lot of discussion on the role and contents of the Economic Survey in recent times.

"What should the Survey aspire to (achieve)? And here the answer is clear, offered by arguably the greatest economist John Maynard Keynes.

"It must possess a rare combination of gifts. It must draw on mathematics, history, statesmanship, and philosophy -- in some degree. It must understand symbols and speak in words. It must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought.

"It must study the present in light of the past for the purpose of future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside its regard. It must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, its authors as aloof and incorruptible as artists, yet sometimes as near to the earth as politicians."

He further said that "over three years", the Survey has "probably fallen short" of those lofty standards.

"But they have been - and must be - the aspiration for this and all Surveys to come," Subramanian added.