H C Katoch
Just as water is essential for sustaining life, economics and statistics application is similar for needs of human life. Water is formed through combination of two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. However, this formula is wrongly applied for economic development by making a mixture of economics and statistical cadre with accounts cadre which don’t find the above similarity for mix up. In fact the clubbing is heterogeneous in nature. While accounts maintenance is purely a subject of arithmetic calculations for preparing statements of departmental expenditure, the planning process consists of various exercises dealing with both primary and secondary data for economic development using different parameters, indicators and also building hypothesis leading to theory and with the passage of time it becomes the law. Thus its horizon matches nowhere to simple arithmetic calculations where the end results are governed by rules/ codes of financial books prescribed for this purpose.
For economic development, one has to understand the economic theories for running the economy with progressive growth. If we take just one aspect of trade cycles starting from depression leading to recovery, prosperity, boom and recession etc, the measures required to come out is the subject matter of economic planning. Economist Lord Keyens brought out the economy out of depression in 1931 with the theory of general employment.
Even deciding the type of budget, the dose of investment in case of deficient finances is to be conceived after watching the trend of inflationary tendencies. Similarly it applies to balanced and surplus budget after assessing the need and behavior of the economy. Capital formation demands inequality in wealth distribution and for that also suitable economic policy is to be decided in the existing scenario.
These are a few instances which place the Economics and Statistics Department as a research oriented for economic policy formulation and none other department can substitute its functioning. Thus it should have its own independent functioning and not being subservient to any other department.
The functions of the Directorate of Economics and Statistics are varied and these are used for formulation of strategy for economic development at micro and macro level.
The economic indicators generated by the Directorate relate to state domestic product, index numbers, indicators of human development, vital statistics, demographic characteristics, consumer price index number for different categories, to count a few amongst others for understanding the behavior of economic development and suggest strategy for plan formulation and investment pattern to achieve sustainable growth without inflationary tendencies.
The other part of field investigations to collect factual data both from primary and secondary sources leading to economic survey is a very important base to evolve appropriate strategy for future action relating to readjustment of priorities in investment. This helps in sector wise priorities of allocations of funds.
Different arms of the Directorate of Economics and Statistics like evaluation, monitoring and field studies results do help in taking corrective measures during plan formulation of different sectors of the economy.
The planning process leads to generation of resources, while the finance reaps the same through taxation to maintain the assets and the committed expenditure to great extent to cater human resource engaged in running the affairs of the State.
There is a need for awakening the system by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics by utilizing the potential of its cadre where good number of qualified intellectuals work. A proper platform is needed to be provided for this purpose. To add dignity for propagation of intecullatual inputs, establishment of “Institute of Economists and Statisticians” is an urgent need that can be used for research and presentation of papers relating to economy of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.
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