Econometric model of India, 1948-1961

The idea of this study occurred to me when I was lecturing on macro-economics in Calcutta University. It seemed to me that the extent of emphasis we put on Keynesian economics was quite mis placed in the Indian context. It was, I thought, necessary to study macro-economics with the problems of Indian economy at the centre of our theory. This context accounts for the academic bias of the book and I very much hope that my modest effort will be of some use for teaching macro-economics in Indian universities and that it will stimulate further interest in this direction.

While grappling with economic data to test economic hypotheses one is inevitably impressed by the complexity of economic mecha nism and the difficulty of arriving at policy prescriptions on the basis of simple models. I am ther cautious about the validity of the policy conclusions emerging from my model. Even so I think there is some truth in my finding that it might have been better for India's economic growth to make greater use of her enormous labour power and to pay somewhat greater attention to agriculture. Al though my research is based on Indian data, I believe that the general methodology and the broad conclusions may also be appli cable to other thickly-populated, under-developed countries.

This book is an outcome of my Ph.D. thesis submitted to Manchester University in 1966. In this connection my greatest debt is to my supervisor Professor R. J. Ball. In spite of his extremely busy schedule, he always granted me a generous amount of his time and his comments and suggestions were most helpful to me; I am also grateful to him for writing a foreword to this book. I also received considerable help from many other members of the staff in Manchester University. On a wider field of academic debt, I must record my gratitude to Professor B. Datta from whom I had my first lessons in economics and Professor A. Datta who always encouraged me in problem-oriented thinking.