Book Summary: "The Ten Trillion Dollar Dream: State of Indian: The State of the Indian Economy and the Policy Reforms Agenda" - Subhash Chandra Garg

Brief about the Book:

India has been a slow and reluctant reformer. This has delayed the reaping of the advantages of new and emerging technologies and production shifts. We cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes in mainstreaming the digital and environmental economy,” he writes. It is, hence, imperative to shape a robust policy reform agenda that will spur higher GDP growth—this is the premise on which he builds.

Subhash Garg cuts across the economic landscape with an?ease and familiarity that only a seasoned bureaucrat and policymaker like him can afford. No facet is left untouched—the current economic trough, COVID fallout, sectoral performance, the economic policy journey since Independence, the twists, turns, and travails along the path, and the fundamental reset brought about in the 1950s and 1990s.

Macroeconomic dimensions, too, are analysed in-depth—fiscal finance, state of currency and money, public debt, investment, tax and non-tax revenue, trade and commerce linkages, and so on. What emerges is that all’s not well with the country’s policy environment.

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Book publication date: February 2022.

Brief about the Author:

Subhash Chandra Garg:- As a member of the Indian Administrative Service for more than thirty-six years, Subhash Garg was deeply involved in public administration, the execution of development programmes, managing state-level institutions, making Budgets both at state- and Central-government levels, and policymaking.

He crafted many Budgets as the secretary, of finance secretary of the government of Rajasthan; as the secretary, of economic affairs; and as the finance secretary to the Government of India. He served as the secretary, of economic affairs, for a little over two years, from 2017 to 2019.

After taking voluntary retirement from the IAS in October 2019, he now works as a policy observer, strategist, commentator and writer on important economic and financial policy issues with a focus on economic and fiscal affairs, and policy of India. Garg's first book, The $10 Trillion Dream: The State of the Indian Economy and the Policy Reforms Agenda, was published in February 2022. His second book, Subhash Chandra Garg's Explanation and Commentary on Budget 2022–23, includes the results and outcome of Budget 2021–22 and the implementation of Budget 2022–23 and develops a national standard for analysing and commenting on Central government budgets.

He writes opinion editorials and columns for print and online news magazines and speaks to think tanks, educational institutions and investors regularly. He appears on television channels for discussions on the economy, Budget and other public policy matters as well.

Time Line:

Secretary Ministry of Power - Government of India

• July 2019 to October 2019

Secretary Economic Affairs - Government of India

• July 2017 to July 2019

Executive Director - World Bank

• November 2014 to July 2017

Officer on Special Duty in Dept. of Economic Affairs - Government of India

• September 2014 to October 2014

Pr. Secretary Finance - Government of Rajasthan

• December 2013 to September 2014

Additional & Joint Secretary Cabinet Secretary

• February 2022 to December 2013

Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture - Government of India

• August 2009 to February 2012

Finance & Principal Secretary, Finance - Government of Rajasthan

• April 2006 to December 2008

Principal Consultant - National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi

• June 2005 to March 2006

Director and Joint Secretary, Ministry of Finance - Government of India

• May 2000 to May 2005

The Ten Trillion Dollar Dream:- Book Review

Exordium:

Subhash Garg promises that he will write a tell-all on his life in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). And in particular, one during his time in the finance ministry, a tumultuous period where he hit headlines for locking horns with the present dispensation (read: finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman).

In his new book The $10 Trillion Dream, Garg only teases about the time after Modi’s landslide victory in the 2019 general elections and Nirmala Sitharaman joined as the new finance minister. “My world changed drastically after the new finance minister joined,” he writes but doesn’t offer much else. Those curious to know the backroom truth on what went catastrophically wrong between the then finance secretary.”

Not that it should divert your attention from this debut book in any way. The veteran bureaucrat, who has since his retirement in 2019 turned into a prolific economic policy think-tank, has channelled his 36-year-long experience, including stints as a secretary in departments of finance, economic affairs as well as power (besides being finance secretary of Rajasthan before that), into this tribute to the Indian economy, and the crucial role that public policy makes.

Or ‘breaks.’

“This book's focus is on the centrality of policy (making) in economic growth (which leads to) the general well-being of citizens,” he said, but added, “Expenditure decisions by the government are reflective of people’s choices. But unfortunately, when you convert people’s choices into that of (political) parties, that objective is not often (met).”

PM Modi may have settled down to a rhetoric of India hitting a $5 trillion economy by 2025, but Garg had a vision long before that — it was he, then at the helm in the finance ministry, who drafted the interim 2019 budget which first spoke of a ‘$10 trillion’ target.

The powers-that-be may have revised their target with one eye on the next general elections, but the author, now not obliged to service rules after his voluntary retirement and switching over to become a strident critic of the government’s economic policies, sticks to his overarching vision.

Not just that, in this exhaustive resource point of a book, Garg presents a wide-angled and comprehensive view of the state of the Indian economy — surprisingly (for a book) updated right up to developments as late as this month.

The Author's knowledge and grasp stemming from his years being right at the heart of economic policy drafting comes through as he takes the reader through how India’s macroeconomic policy, and real status, evolved since independence. Not just that, it zeroes in on various important sectors, right from the traditional agrarian reforms to the digital sector. Through the journey, he also focuses on pivotal moments and trends, ranging from the 1991 liberalisation to the 2020 Farm Bills. Garg seals the deal with the final section where he gives his blueprint to achieve the target of a ten trillion dollar economy by 2035, complete with the reforms needed anywhere from labour to industrial policy and taxation.

True to his crucial years at the Centre, Garg barely brushes over the needed transformations in health and education, a state subject, despite it being something India doesn’t seem to have learned even after the Covid-19 pandemic. Bedside reading, this 700-page giant of a book may not be. But a great reference go-to any time you want to write, read and talk knowledgeably about the Indian economy, certainly is.

Conclusion:

The industrial economy is also plateauing and poised to go the agricultural way in the coming decades. India was the global leader in the agricultural economy but was quite late in adopting the Industrial Revolution. The result was for everyone to see. We became converted to one of the world’s poorest countries.

The data, chips, code, and platforms make up the digital economy. We have been good at using digital technology for providing information services. But, for almost everything else in the digital economy, whether it is building semiconductor chips or laying optical fibre, or, until very recently, even writing the software and creating e-commerce and other services platforms, we have not produced any global winners.

We have so far spent more energy and policy time trying to control data flows than inventing or adopting digital technologies.

Learning:

The $10 Trillion Dream is by no means an easy read. One has to stay patiently with the author as he walks us through and bear the perils and the perks that lie ahead. Some of the reforms suggested may appear radical too, but they just reflect the need to keep pace with the times.

Pursuing the familiar is passé in a disruptive world. The way to break new ground is to rethink, reassess, and reprioritise. This is the most valuable insight to be drawn by political and business stakeholders, those willing to look beyond the immediate and the short-term.

Subhash Garg & Penguin Publishing Group Penguin Random House Penguin Random House UK Penguin