Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee says Indian economy shows 'glaring signs’ of slowing down, but the government data might not show the exact picture.
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00:00So the economy is slowing very, very fast.
00:05How fast, we don't know, because there's dispute about data, but I think fast.
01:00The economy is doing very badly, in my view.
01:24One of the numbers that just came out is the National Sample Survey, which comes out every
01:30one and a half years or so, and it gives you the average consumption in urban and rural
01:37areas in India.
01:38And the fact that we see in that is that between 2014-15 and 2017-18, that number has slightly
01:46gone down.
01:47And that's the first time such a thing has happened in many, many, many, many, many years.
01:51So that's a, that's a very, so glaring warning sign.
01:56There's enormous fight going on in India about which data is right, and the government has
02:02a particular view of all data that's inconvenient to it is wrong.
02:07But nonetheless, I think that this is, this is, this is something that I think even the
02:13government is increasingly recognizing, that there is a problem.
02:18So the economy is slowing very, very fast.
02:20How fast?
02:21We don't know.
02:22There's this dispute about data, but I think fast.
02:50So there are not enough women in the economic profession at all levels.
03:18There are not enough undergraduates who choose to take economics.
03:21There are not enough graduate students who continue.
03:23There are not enough assistant professor.
03:25There are not enough, enough tenured faculty.
03:46I feel like I walked onto the set of a wrong movie.