Economics by committee is killing us.

With the economy in the doldrums one way to increase sales is to give something free with every purchase. Buy one shirt and get another one free or buy a ketchup and get a chili sauce free and so on. So when we got the our most revered Prime Minister we were so happy because we thought that we got a World Famous Economist and an Honest Man for free, 3 for the price of one, as it were. Sadly, the economy is in free fall, corruption is at an all time high, the police have become a brutal occupying force and women and children are being raped to death. Prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas and electricity were increased. New taxes were levied on restaurants, hair dressers and properties. Even hospitals and distributors of newspapers have to pay service tax. So a man reading a newspaper while dying of cancer in a hospital is having to pay 2 sets of service taxes. This was hailed by our freeloading journalists as " big bang reforms " and we were told that the deficit can come down to below 5%, the Current Account Deficit can be controlled and that the economy can grow at 8 or 9% or whatever, if the western economies start to grow, if commodity prices were to fall and if there is a good monsoon bringing down food prices. Surely. If I had wings I could fly. What no one is asking is why matters are at such a desperate state after 9 years of the World Famous Economist at the helm. Why does he need a host of economic advisers, which must be costing an awful lot, and what advice are they giving him? We all know about the great sage, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission who issues prophecies from time to time which are so abstruse as to be completely incomprehensible. Then there is the Chief Economic Adviser, Raghuram Rajan a  professor in the US, like his predecessor, Mr Kaushik Basu. As also Mr C Rangarajan, Chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council who has said that there is no need for big bang reforms as in the 1990s. Some new remedy called " incremental changes " will suffice. TOI, 22 April. He said that beneficial effects from the action taken to speed up project clearance will visible in the current fiscal.  Wow. " I believe the Indian economy has bottomed out," said he. He believes but is not sure. The Japanese bank, Nomura says that the CAD will fall to 4.3% in 2013, which is still too high, because our gold import bill will fall by $8 billion and our oil bill by $9 billion. ET, 22 April. Wholesale Price Index will fall to 5.6% year-on-year in 2013 which is 1.6% below current forecast and the Consumer Price Index to 9.2% which is 0.6% below current forecast. Interest rate will be reduced by 75 basis points instead of the expected 25. A classic case of treatment by committee in which the patient usually dies.