Now to master all it has surveyed

Economic Survey 2025-26 highlights India's economic resilience in a deteriorating global trade scenario and stresses the need for a concerted export push to up growth. The economy is better placed, with consumption and investment expected to do heavy lifting. Imports are bound to climb for a fast-growing economy, and export performance must keep pace. India is shifting its focus from substitution to immunity and, eventually, interdependence. This calls for a much bigger footprint in global supply chains. Advanced manufacturing requires a reorientation of economic processes and the role of policy to encourage risk-taking.

Bipolar or multipolar globalisation requires countries to create new linkages between producers and consumers. India is fashioning its own responses, principally through considered economic management. This has enhanced its ability to cushion geopolitical financial shocks. The survey argues policymaking must build on these to add economic and strategic strength. A permanently harsher external environment requires the economy to adapt by building bigger cushions against capital movements. Another interesting suggestion is about constituting an economic agency for AI to focus on how to enhance the tech's productivity gains while minimising disruption among the country's large labour pool.

The survey also flags conditions holding back cities. Urban stress is piling up on account of land, housing and transport. Rapid urbanisation is not transforming into productivity gains or global influence. There's scope to improve urban planning through data-driven processes and by harmonising classifications. The survey identifies inadequate governance as a constraint and says some form of autonomy may lead to an improvement in reliability and efficiency of services. The survey has interesting observations on civic behaviour in the context of the infrastructure where it is displayed. It finds an explanation for why Indians are better behaved in metros than on city buses. That's a question many would love an answer to.