Archives: Event

The fifth meeting of the Advisory Panel of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-II), chaired by Pronab Sen, former Chairman, National Statistical Commission, was held at the NCAER Conference Room on August 11, 2016. The IHDS is the first large panel survey conducted jointly by the NCAER and University of Maryland for the same households at two points in time, viz. 2004-05 and 2011-12, and is led by Sonalde Desai (Senior Fellow, NCAER and Professor, University of Maryland), Amaresh Dubey (Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Senior Consultant, NCAER) and Reeve Vanneman (Professor, University of Maryland). The goal of this programme is to document changes in the daily lives of Indian households including the way they live, work, educate their children, care for their aged parents, and deal with ill health. IHDS-I data were collected in 2004-05 from 41,554 households. This exercise was repeated in 2011-12 for IHDS-II, when the same households were revisited, with a high re-contact rate of 83 per cent after seven years, including 90 per cent in rural and 70 per cent in urban areas. The panel survey provides a rich empirical database available free of charge to a wide range of researchers in India and abroad. The IHDS data are currently being used by an estimated 7,000 users worldwide.

The Advisory Panel members who attended the meeting, apart from the Chair, Pronab Sen, included Satish Agnihotri, former Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat and currently Professor, IIT, Mumbai; Priyanka Bansal, representing Soumya Swaminathan, Secretary (DHR) and Director-General (Health Systems Research), ICMR; Ashwini Deshpande, Professor, Delhi University; Dipankar Gupta; G.C. Manna, Director-General and CEO, National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO); Arvind Pandey, Director, National Institute of Medical Statistics, ICMR; Ms Anna Roy, Advisor, NITI Aayog; Sayeed Unisa, Professor, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS); and Shekhar Shah, Director General, NCAER. The IHDS project leaders, Sonalde Desai, Amaresh Dubey and Reeve Vanneman (by video conferencing) highlighted the achievements and challenges of carrying out the first large scale national panel survey in India.

While delivering the opening remarks, Shekhar Shah stated that IHDS represents NCAER’s many forays into large-scale data collection since the 1950s and builds on the Human Development Profile of India (HDPI) initiated in the 1990s, which signified its first multipurpose household survey. He also highlighted the immense possibilities of the panel survey, with IHDS-II and IHDS-I being the second and fourth most downloaded data sets, respectively, from among the archives of the Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR), University of Michigan.

The chair of the Panel, Pronab Sen said that it was important to decide if the IHDS should continue in its current form or assume a new form, especially since we are now on the cusp of starting IHDS-III. He also said that it is imperative to assess the extent to which IHDS-I and IHDS-II have predominantly been used as panels or as standalone cross-sections because the main purpose of the survey was to generate panel data. He said that developments in academia are also increasingly stressing the use of panel data.

Amaresh Dubey suggested that access to multi-topic surveys like IHDS reshapes academic discourse by allowing researchers to examine linkages between economic and social transformations based on data that capture the day-to-day lives of people in India, and information on their earning patterns, income and consumption, migration decisions, and education levels, among other human development indicators.

A number of presentations were made by IHDS researchers during the meeting to showcase the findings of the research team based on the data generated during the surveys.

A presentation by P. K. Ghosh, Associate Fellow, NCAER, on ‘Attrition in and Validation of IHDS-II Data’, emphasised the intense supervision required to ensure re-contact with the original households and compared the basic characteristics of IHDS with other data sources like the Census and NSS.

Outlining the challenges of public release of data, Sonalde Desai averred that though IHDS was designed as a public resource, it is simultaneously important to respect respondent privacy which prevents making identification below district level available to users. She noted that the high usage of IHDS is not only due to the worldwide interest in India but also because of the stringent quality checks and breadth of topics covered in the data sets. Over 200 papers and theses have been written using IHDS data. Three user conferences and one training session have so far been organised for users.

In his presentation, Debasis Barik, Associate Fellow, NCAER, highlighted economic status and mortality linkages. Since literature has not paid sufficient attention to the role of income in shaping the incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiac disorders, longitudinal data is needed to address two-way causation.

In her presentation, Ms Sadhika Bagga, Research Associate, NCAER, focused on ‘Demography of Inequality in India’, and claimed that research on inequality and poverty focuses more on countries and households and less on individuals. Thus, incomes grew and poverty declined for everyone during the period between IHDS-I and IHDS-II, but less so for children. The public policy challenge, therefore, is to implement more child-focused policy initiatives.

Studying ‘Poverty Incidence: Static and Dynamic’ in his presentation, Amit Thorat, Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, revealed that between 2004-05 and 2011-12, poverty fell from 37 to 22 per cent, signifying probably the largest reduction over any previous decade. He asserted that while poverty has declined substantially, households continue to fall into poverty largely due to the occurrence of catastrophic life events. Thus, different approaches are needed to deal with the chronically poor and vulnerable groups.

The meeting concluded with a delineation of the challenges of data collection by Sonalde Desai, recommendations for the way forward, and the need for institutionalising responses and the process of knowledge. It was decided that NCAER also has to marry the imperatives of ensuring best practices and high quality data generation with maintenance of the highest standards of confidentiality.

The Way Forward

The way forward entails planning for IHDS-III as more waves allow for better causal modelling. Another wave is needed to study the constant changes taking place in the socio-demographic landscape of India. An important development is the use of technological innovations by switching from Paper and Pencil Interviewing (PAPI) to Computer-assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI), wherein the data is directly entered into a computer programme instead of using paper questionnaires. Other policy changes pertaining to decentralisation, DBT and financial inclusion, for instance, and the impact of welfare programmes like MGNREGA, JSY and expansions in safety nets over extended periods of time can also be studied through panel data. In addition, data on migration, which is an uncharted frontier, needs to be collected and analysed comprehensively as this social phenomenon has tremendous implications for socio-economic developments in a transitioning society. IHDS-III thus has a significant niche to fill in the research space.

The Third Annual IHDS Data User Conference was held at the Neemrana Fort Palace from 16-18 March 2016.

NCAER’S Quarterly Review of the Economy July 2016

NCAER predicts GDP will grow at 7.6 percent in 2016-17

NCAER Team presented the Quarterly Review of the Economy at a seminar held at its Conference Room. The review covered the performance of the Economy in the first quarter of 2016-17 and forecast for the year head. The seminar also included a presentation by Andreas Bauer, Senior Resident Representative—India, Nepal, Bhutan on ‘’Global Outlook and the Brexit Impact.

 Key Highlights

NCAER’s annual model for GDP market prices at constant (2011–12) prices forecasts a GDP growth rate of 7.6% for 2016-17. The Gross Value Added (GVA) at Basic Prices at constant (2011-12) prices is predicted to grow at 7.2% in 2016-17.  Real Agriculture GVA is forecasted to grow at 4.1%, real Industry GVA at 7.1% and real Services GVA at 7.9% in 2016-17.  Growth in exports and imports, in dollar terms, is projected at 2.5% and (-) 8.0%, respectively, while Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation is projected at 2.8% for 2016-17. The current account balance and fiscal deficit as percentage of GDP are projected at (-) 0.7% and 3.1%, respectively, for 2016-17.

In the agriculture sector, a redeeming feature of 2015-16 was that despite deficiency in monsoon rainfall the overall output of food grains did not fall though output of commercial crops did suffer. During 2016-17 the South-west monsoon was deficient in June 2016 but in July 2016 there was a significant recovery though it still continues to remain spatially uneven as a quarter of the 36 sub-districts in India are still suffering from deficiency in rainfall. Though outlook for the second half of the monsoon season remains positive, which probably would dampen the price rise in 2016-17, which otherwise have witnessed a significant jump in the first quarter of this financial year.

On the industrial sector front, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) numbers show weak growth for the first two months of the current fiscal.  For April-May, 2016-17, it grew at -0.1 per cent on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis, mainly driven down by slow and uneven growth in manufacturing (-1.5%).  Capital goods suffered double-digit fall in the first two months of the current fiscal indicating weak investment activity in the economy (-18.9%) on a y-0-y basis. Consumer durables growth continues to exhibit strong growth (8.9% on a y-o-y basis).  The index of eight core industries grew by 5.4% in 2016-17:Q1 versus 2.5% in 2015-16:Q1.

The lead indicators of the services sector suggest an uncertain outlook for the first quarter of the current fiscal. Tourist arrivals grew by 7.4% on a y-o-y basis during 2016-17:Q1, versus 3.7% in 2015-16:Q1. Bank Credit to the Commercial Sector stagnated at 8.8% and 8.9% in 2015-16:Q1 and 2016-17:Q1 respectively. However, y-o-y growth of aggregate deposits slowed down to 9.1% in 2016-17:Q1 versus 10.6% in 2015-16:Q1. Other lead indicators also showed mixed y-o-y growth patterns except domestic aviation passenger traffic (20.4%) and production of commercial vehicles (17.3%). Both showed double digit growth in 2016-17:Q1

The performance of the external sector in the first quarter has been relatively weak but it shows signs of improvements.  The first quarter (Q1: April-June) of 2016-17 has posted a decline of 2.1% (y-o-y) in merchandise exports to US$ 65.3 billion. Imports declined by 14.5% (y-o-y) to US$ 84.5 billion. The slowdown in imports was mainly due to reduction in oil imports that reduced by 23.6% (y-o-y) in 2016-17:Q1. Non-oil imports declined by 11.5% (y-o-y) in 2016-17:Q1.  Service exports and imports also showed signs of improvement. After growing negatively on a y-o-y basis from November 2015, exports grew at 13.4% and imports at 25.4% in May 2016.

The BSE Sensex moved up by more than 1500 points in Q1, from 25,343 on March 31, 2016 to 27,000 on June 30, 2016. However, the y-o-y percentage rate of growth continues to be negative in 2016-17:Q1 (-4.1%).

On the prices front, y-o-y WPI inflation further edged upwards, turning positive (1.1%) in 2016-17:Q1. CPI inflation (y-o-y) also turned marginally upwards (5.7%). This is mainly due to the jump in food inflation. WPI Food Articles inflation (y-o-y) increased from 4.8% in 2015-16:Q1 to 6.9% in 2016-17:Q1. Consumer Food Price Index showed y-o-y increase of 7.2% in 2016-17:Q1, from 5.8% in 2015-16:Q4. Food inflation was mainly driven by double-digit inflation of pulses (32.3%) and vegetables (10.9%).  Within vegetables, it was potatoes that was the driving force, rising by 55.5% in 2016-17:Q1 versus -6.7% in 2015-16:Q1.  Core-WPI (y-o-y) inflation rate, however remained at sub-zero level in 2016-17:Q1 but shows increasing trend from September 2015. Core CPI (y-o-y) inflation rate fluctuated around 4.6 between the period April 2015 to June 2016.

On the fiscal front, the deficit touched 61% of the budget estimate in 2016-17:Q1, as against 51.2% in 2015-16:Q1.

About the Quarterly Review of the Economy

The Quarterly Review has been designed to meet the needs of policy makers, corporates and others interested in tracking the latest developments in the Indian economy. It provides an analysis of current policies and tracks developments in both the domestic as well as the global economies. The growth forecasts of NCAER are objective and are widely quoted and referred to in both the Indian as well as the international media. An integral part of the Quarterly Review is the State of Economy Seminars, organised quarterly at NCAER, which bring together policy makers, industry leaders and researchers at one forum.

At a seminar held at NCAER, Nirvikar Singh, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, reviewed and analyzed the three initiatives of the Government of India, namely, Digital India, Start-up India and Make in India in terms of the needed sectoral economic reforms, including in education and skilling, labor markets, finance, infrastructure, urbanization, taxation, trade and FDI, intellectual property rights and government regulatory approaches. He examined the extent to which these dimensions of reform are needed, individually and in combination with each other, for the success of the three initiatives, which themselves have many overlaps in objectives. Attended by research fellows, staff and other invitees, this session provided an opportunity for a lot interaction and discussions during the Q&A that followed Professor Singh’s presentation. Dr Saurabh Bandyopadhyay and Dr Anusha, Associate Fellows, NCAER, also presented their viewpoints as discussants for this seminar.

Nirvikar Singh is Distinguished Professor of Economics and Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also directs the Center for Analytical Finance. He has been a member of the Advisory Group to the Finance Minister of India on G-20 matters, and has served as Consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.  He is a member of NCAER’s India Policy Forum Research Panel. Professor Singh’s current research topics include entrepreneurship, information technology and development, electronic commerce, business strategy, political economy, federalism, economic growth and the Indian economy. He has authored over 100 research papers and co-authored or edited several books. He has also served as an advisor for several start-ups and knowledge services firms in Silicon Valley and in India.  He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Nirvikar Singh previously delivered a talk on “Digital India Campaign-Scope and Challenges” at NCAER on July 23, 2015

NCAER in association with Penguin Random House India, hosted Vijay Joshi for the launch of his book, ‘India’s Long Road: the Search for Prosperity’, at India Habitat Center on July 14, 2016 to a packed house.

Vijay Joshi was in conversation with  Bimal Jalan, Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and former President and Honorary Fellow at NCAER,  Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President, Center for Policy Research and  T N Ninan, Chairman, Business Standard. The panel was moderated by Shekhar Shah, Director-General of  NCAER.

The Indian economy has been the subject of many assumptions and extravagant predictions. While outlining the shaky foundations of the rapid, sustainable and inclusive economic growth that India is seeking to achieve, Joshi pointed to some roadblocks in economic growth and prosperity in the context of the dynamic political landscape of the country.

Joshi argued for a comprehensive re-alignment of the relations between the state, the market and the private sector to optimize economic progress in India. Despite the call for greater economic liberalization, there is still scope for state level intervention in many key areas of public welfare and private entrepreneurship. Joshi thus laid out an innovative reform model for enhancing basic incomes and alleviating poverty in the country.

During his discussion, Joshi also alluded to three other countries, viz. China, South Korea and Taiwan that have achieved a per capita income of 6 per cent. Comparing India’s growth with these nations, he claimed that the state in India has a greater responsibility to deliver inclusive growth and employment not merely because of its democratic credentials but also to ensure the success of its ambitious workfare programmes at the grassroots level.

Vijay Joshi is Reader Emeritus at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. His areas of interest are macroeconomics, international economics and development economics; he has published widely in these fields in scholarly journals and elsewhere. He has written (jointly with I.M.D. Little) two major books on India, India’s Economic Reforms 1991-2001, (1996); and India–Macroeconomics and Political Economy 1964-1991 (1994).  During his varied career, Joshi has served as Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance and Special Adviser to the Governor, Reserve Bank of India.