Suppressed Critique

Suppressed Critique Bhabatosh Datta Reserve Bank of India: Annual Report 1985-86; Bombay, August 1986,
ONE can appreciate the embarrassing position of a body like the Reserve Bank of India when it has to report on the state of the economy in the past year (July 1985 to June 1986) and also to present some evaluation of the immediate prospects. It cannot (and does not) avoid the presentation of the actual developments and can permit itself to point out the deficiencies, shortfalls and disappointment of expectations. Its critical analysis has to be cautious and it has to be careful to conform broadly to the line of approach taken by the government. And it has to be more than cautious in making forecasts about the future. Sometimes, the pessimism about the past year is followed by a mild op* timism about the new year, without indicating the non-sequitur that may be involved. Nothing that the Bank has said about 1985-86 prepares the reader for the hope held out that "the performance of the economy in 1986-87 could be expected to be better than in the previous two years".