The Economic Survey’s long arc

This analysis is based on Thurro Answers’ AI-led reading of India’s Economic Surveys from 2018–19 to 2024–25. Rather than treating each Survey as a standalone precursor to the Union Budget, Thurro Answers reads them longitudinally—tracking shifts in language, argument structure, metaphors, and policy logic across years.

By structuring Economic Surveys into a comparable, searchable corpus and applying AI-assisted thematic and linguistic analysis, Thurro Answers enables patterns to emerge that are difficult to detect through isolated reading. This makes it possible to trace how the Survey’s role itself evolved—from diagnosis to persuasion to operational guidance—well beyond headline chapters or charts.

Earlier in this series, we analysed how the Budget speeches have evolved, how they redefined their intended audience, reframed employment, and realigned sectoral priorities over time. In this analysis note, we examine the Economic Survey itself: how its language, structure, and role changed over the last seven years, and what that revealed about the state’s evolving economic worldview. 

The first three editions of the Survey in this period were prepared by Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian. The 2021–22 edition was prepared by Sanjeev Sanyal, then Principal Economic Adviser. The last three editions have been prepared by Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran.

Concepts such as wealth creation, ethical wealth, and the moral legitimacy of markets were placed at the core of the State’s economic argument. Deregulation, private enterprise, and market efficiency were not presented merely as policy tools; they were framed as ethical necessities underpinning long-term prosperity.

In 2019-20, this worldview deepened. Markets were defended explicitly through the distinction between pro-business and pro-crony policies, with trust positioned as a public good that allowed the invisible hand to function effectively. The Survey was persuasive, argumentative, and normative in tone.

The pandemic years tested this worldview. 2020-21 and 2021-22 editions of the Survey reframed the state temporarily as crisis manager, insurer, and stabiliser. However, this shift was explicitly positioned as conditional and exceptional. The Survey argued repeatedly that crisis response should preserve long-term growth logic, not replace it. The introduction of the Agile Approach in 2021-22 signalled a move toward continuous monitoring and adaptive policy, rather than a return to permanent intervention.

From 2022-23, the emphasis shifted decisively from why growth mattered to how it would be delivered. The Survey increasingly read less like a philosophical defence of markets and more like a design document for economic systems —focused on coordination, sequencing, and execution.

One of the clearest longitudinal shifts in the Economic Survey was how the state described itself. 

In earlier Surveys, the state was cast as a reformer—reducing policy uncertainty, correcting distortions, and unleashing private initiative. Chapters dwelt on deregulation, market signals, incentive alignment, and legal predictability as growth enablers.

Post-pandemic, this identity evolved. From 2022-23 onwards, the state increasingly presented itself as an adaptive policy-maker and fiscal stabiliser, capable of responding to shocks through feedback loops, real-time data, and targeted interventions.

In the last two editions, the Survey adopted a more explicitly managerial and strategic tone. The state was no longer just enabling markets; it was coordinating them—setting platforms, defining interfaces, sequencing reforms, and, in some cases, deliberately stepping back. The emphasis on deregulation in 2024-25 reframed governance itself as an act of restraint: getting out of the way became a policy objective.

Early Surveys were explicitly pro-enterprise, almost defensive in tone. Firms were framed as engines of national prosperity, with repeated arguments in favour of scale, profitability, and creative destruction after years of policy scepticism.

In later Surveys, this celebratory tone softened. 2022-23 onwards, firms appeared less as partners to be convinced and more as actors operating within designed systems—participants in supply chains, adopters of technology, and executors of incentives.

In the last two editions, persuasion gave way to expectation. The Survey spoke to firms as agents assumed to respond rationally to incentives and regulatory clarity. Trust-based regulation, compliance simplification, and cost reduction replaced moral argument. The assumption was no longer that firms needed encouragement to invest, but that they would—if the system was correctly designed.

In the earlier Surveys, employment was discussed largely in aggregate terms. Growth was expected to generate jobs; formalisation was framed as a natural outcome of scale; productivity gains were treated as indirect enablers of opportunity.

Over time, this framing sharpened. From 2022-23 onwards, productivity became the central analytical concern. Job quality, skill intensity, and labour reallocation mattered more than raw employment numbers. Informality was increasingly framed as a productivity constraint rather than a moral failure.

Labour appeared less as a lived experience and more as a system input. Jobs were treated as outcomes of functioning ecosystems—industrial clusters, services expansion, technology diffusion—rather than objects of direct targeting. This aligned closely with how later Budgets framed employment policy.

One of the most striking evolutions in the Economic Survey was how technology was treated. 

In early Surveys, technology was discussed as a sector—IT services, startups, and digital payments. Over time, it became infrastructural. From 2021-22 onwards, digital public infrastructure, data systems, and platforms were treated as economic substrates on which other sectors depended.

In 2023-24 and 2024-25, this framing matured further. Artificial intelligence was no longer speculative. It was discussed in terms of augmented intelligence, productivity enhancement, and administrative capacity. Technology receded as a headline topic and re-emerged as embedded leverage.

Across these years, the Economic Survey’s long-term imagination changed tone. While the early Surveys spoke aspirationally—of catching up, becoming a USD 5 trillion economy, and reclaiming growth momentum—there was urgency and ambition.

Later Surveys spoke with inevitability. Concepts such as Viksit Bharat, demographic advantage, and structural resilience were treated less as goals and more as trajectories already underway. Risks were acknowledged, but the underlying confidence was unmistakable.

Growth was no longer framed as something India hoped to achieve. It was framed as something India was structurally positioned to deliver—provided execution remained disciplined.

Taken together, these shifts reveal a document that quietly changed function. The Economic Survey is no longer primarily a diagnostic report or a persuasive essay. It has become a pre-Budget policy framework —setting conceptual framework, explaining policy choices, and pre-structuring the terms of debate before fiscal announcements are even made.

By the time the Budget is presented, much of its logic has already been embedded.

The Survey no longer asks whether a policy direction is correct. It assumes correctness—and focuses on how quickly, efficiently, and systematically it can be implemented.

Across these years, the Economic Survey steadily consolidates its core economic framework. Markets are affirmed; the state is strengthened, systems replace schemes, and execution replaces argument. The document reflects a government that believes its economic worldview is settled—and that the remaining challenge is coordination, scale, and delivery. 

The Economic Survey has become quieter, firmer, and more settled. In doing so, it reveals a state that no longer feels the need to persuade—but assumes participation and execution. 

Cover photo credit: Unsplash

View disclaimer

This is the fifth in a series of Thurro analysis notes in the run-up to the Union Budget 2026.

The underlying analysis for this piece is available in the accompanying Thurro Notebook or download the PDF version below to read offline

Next: How the Union Budget reshaped its social contract