Articles by K Sundaram

The release of the Provisional Population Totals based on Population Census 2001 necessitates revisions in the estimates of population and of workforce for 1993-94 and 1999-2000 and hence also in the estimates of labour productivity. Besides carrying out the necessary revisions in the size of the workforce (and in labour productivity), this paper offers a detailed industrial distribution of the workforce as well as an occupation distribution of the workforce based on the additional tables now available from the NSS 55th Round Employment-Unemployment Survey.

In the context of the controversy over the trends in poverty in India in the 1990s, this paper addresses the question of using the National Accounts Statistics (NAS) estimate of private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) in place of National Sample Survey (NSS) based estimate for calculating the proportion of the population below the poverty line or headcount ratio. A comparison is undertaken for the year 1993-94 between NAS estimate of PFCE and household consumer expenditure estimated from NSS disaggregated across item-groups of consumption and across selected fractile groups of the rural and urban population. Two alternative estimates from NAS - old series in NAS 1998 and the latest revision in NAS 1999 - are compared. Similarly, two alternative NSS estimates are considered - one directly available using a uniform 30-day reference or recall period and a synthetic one constructed to reflect the effect of using non-uniform reference period. The analysis of comparison of these four estimates suggests two major conclusions. One, the issue of accepting NAS estimate of PFCE as more correct and reliable than NSS estimate is far from settled. Two, the item groups that accounted for a very large proportion of the aggregate discrepancy between NAS and NSS estimates had a much smaller budget share in the consumption basket of the bottom 30 per cent fractile group in the rural and urban areas, whereas in respect of item-groups which together accounted for over 75 per cent of the consumption of the bottom 30 per cent, the divergence between the two estimates was much smaller than on the average for all item groups and negative in some cases.

This paper argues that the suggestion that the indirect effects of changes in administered prices on inflation would be offset by the deflationary impact of additional revenue is seriously misleading. The authors also refute the contention that the budget deficit route is more harmful than the once-for-all adjustment in raising administered prices. Finally, the compelling need for taking co-ordinated decisions relating to capacity utilisation, new investment and cost-based pricing across the set of interdependent public sector industries/enterprises is highlighted.

Black Money and Effectiveness of Monetary Policy V Pandit K Sundaram IN their latest communication on the question of black money and the effectiveness of monetary policy (EPWt September 8, 1984), Acharya and Madhur (hereafter AM) have sought to defend their modelling of the question and, despite their own doubts about the robustness of their empirical results, have stated that they "continue to subscribe" to their earlier conclusions. Their faith in the one regression equation estimated by them must indeed be overwhelming. For their reply to our critique not only does not squarely face the questions raised in our critique but also fails to recognise the implications of their 'caveats'for the issues at hand.

Registrar General's Population Projections, 1981-2001 An Appraisal and an Alternative Scenario K Sundaram This analysis of the Registrar General's population projections points to the need for a substantial upward revision of the base year population. It also suggests that the likely orders of decline in the gross fertility rates would be much less than what is postulated in the Registrar General's 'medium' projection.