Strutting on Export Stage

DESPITE over Rs 5,000 crores worth of foreign exchange reserves, the appearance of declining exports strikes panic in the minds of those who are obsessed with the stereotype of an underdeveloped economy. In order to develop, such an economy must invest, to invest it must rely on imports and to pay for these at least partially it must try to export as much as possible. The stereotype haunts despite the surfeit of foreign exchange, the lack of internal markets and purchasing power which holds up investment, and surplus wage goods stocks in the midst of acute want. It is a mark of how abstracted planning and policy exercises have become from the real life and needs of the people and the economy that the task force set up by the Ministry of Commerce and headed by the Secretary for Agriculture should have come out with suggestions aimed at doubling exports of agricultural products.