The Economic Survey 2025–26 argues that the age of easy globalisation is over. Trade is coercive, capital flows are volatile, and technology is geopolitical. In this environment, India must build domestic capability and reduce dependence on external finance. The Survey explicitly calls for a shift from integration to indigenisation, presenting Swadeshi as a strategic necessity rather than an ideology. Its macroeconomic tone is set clearly, where persistent current account deficits force countries to rely on foreign savings, raise the cost of capital, and increase vulnerability to external shocks. Resilience, the Survey suggests, must therefore come from within. However, on several central questions, the Survey’s claims do not hold up when read against India’s own economic experience and, in many cases, against the Survey’s own data.Here are ten things the Economic Survey got wrong this time:1. Globalisation is reorganising and not collapsingIn reality, global capitalism seems to be undergoing the process of reorganisation rather than outright retreat. Supply chains are diversifying, production is fragmenting, and trade is being rerouted through new geopolitical alignments. Contemporary fragmentation appears to be another phase of reconfiguration rather than a determined break from globalisation.2. Integration and not insulation, a key factor driving the Indian EconomyThe Survey increasingly equates resilience with reduced exposure. But India’s own growth story contradicts this. The country’s most successful sectors, IT services, pharmaceuticals, auto components, grew through deep global integration, not insulation. Resilience has historically come from managing integration intelligently, not retreating from it. By framing resilience as inward capacity-building alone, the Survey understates the institutional gains India has already achieved through global engagement.3. Growth not translated into labour absorptionIndia’s integration into global value chains has shaped the labour market unevenly. Manufacturing has become increasingly capital-intensive, while services exports have generated high-productivity jobs for a narrow segment of the workforce. For most workers, employment growth has taken the form of informal self-employment, unpaid family labour, and low-wage casual work. It is at this juncture that the Survey’s optimism begins to strain, where globally competitive growth coexists with persistently weak labour absorption.4. Ambiguity around the notion of employmentThe Survey highlights rising employment and falling unemployment rates. But these numbers rest heavily on how employment is defined. Under India’s labour surveys, any activity performed for even one hour in the reference week counts as employment. Unpaid family work, subsistence self-employment, and irregular casual labour are all treated on par with stable wage jobs. As a result, employment growth increasingly reflects work-sharing rather than labour absorption.Also read: Health Budget Grows Every Year. So Why Isn’t Public Healthcare Improving?More people are working, but for fewer hours, lower wages, and with greater insecurity. Underemployment, marked by low work hours, irregular work, and stagnant earnings, barely figures in the Survey’s assessment, even though it shapes everyday economic reality. India, in this sense, is not a jobless economy, rather a work-poor one.5. Formalisation mistaken for job creationThe Survey draws confidence from rising formalisation, often citing EPFO enrolments, GST registrations and Udyam registrations as evidence of job creation. However, these indicators primarily reflect administrative expansion rather than productive expansion. Where EPFO data largely reflect job switching, compliance changes, and the formalisation of existing employment, new GST 2.0 or Udyam registrations often signal that firms are entering the tax net rather than creating new enterprises. Formalisation undeniably is crucial for regulatory reach and workers’ protection, but formalisation without labour absorption does not solve the employment problem. 6. High FLPR masks distress-driven employmentThe same caution applies to claims about rising female labour force participation. While participation rates have increased, much of this rise is fuelled by unpaid family labour, home-based self-employment, and agricultural assistance, rather than by a growth in well-compensated wage employment. A significant number of these newly recorded female workers reflect limited alternatives to better labour market opportunities. Several economists, in this respect, argue that the overall increase in participation may mask distress-driven engagement, especially in rural areas. Treating them as unambiguous progress risks mistaking statistics, when income security, autonomy and quality of employment is questionable. 7. Current account deficits are the master constraint on growthThe Survey treats persistent current account deficits as a structural brake on development, arguing that reliance on foreign savings raises the cost of capital. India’s own history complicates this claim. The fastest growth phase of the 2000s coincided with rising external deficits. Today, high borrowing costs reflect weak financial intermediation, risk-averse banking, and credit market failures more than external imbalance alone. By elevating the current account to a master constraint, the Survey risks diverting attention from domestic institutional weaknesses.8. Welfare is portrayed as distorting growth incentivesThe Survey expresses concern that unconditional cash transfers crowd out capital expenditure and weaken incentives. This concern pertains to fiscally relatively inflexible, unconditional programs, rather than income support in itself. But this framing overlooks the structural conditions driving the rapid expansion of DBTs.Also read: Union Budget 2026-27: A Road to NowhereIn an economy where stable jobs are scarce and underemployment widespread, transfers function as compensation for missing labour income. DBTs persist not merely because of political populism, but because they fill a vacuum left by labour markets. Their electoral stickiness reflects more on the labour market failure than fiscal indiscipline. Income support has become a substitute for job creation. Where welfare outcomes fall short, the problem is flawed intent rather than weak administrative and delivery capacity.9. Capital-intensive public investment is assumed to generate jobs automaticallyThe Survey, reinforced by the Budget, places heavy faith in infrastructure-led growth. Public capital expenditure has expanded physical capacity, but its employment effects are limited and temporary. Construction creates short-term work, not sustained livelihoods. Manufacturing incentives prioritise scale and output, with employment treated as a by-product rather than a criterion. Expecting jobs to follow automatically from capital deepening ignores India’s recent experience of investment-led growth bypassing labour.10. Agricultural growth signals a durable improvement in farm livelihoodsThe Survey cites agricultural growth as evidence of rural resilience, while the data provided states otherwise. Agricultural growth slowed to 3.5% in the second quarter of 2025–26, below the recent average of 4.4%. More importantly, decadal growth has been driven primarily by livestock and fisheries, while crop-sector growth remains much lower. Since most farmers depend on crops, aggregate growth does not translate into broad-based income improvement. By conflating output growth with income gains, the Survey overstates the success of its rural strategy.The Economic Survey is right to acknowledge a more uncertain global environment. But resilience cannot be built on misreading India’s own economy. Growth that bypasses labour, formalisation without job creation, and welfare without employment reform cannot anchor long-term stability. India does not need a fortress economy. It needs institutions capable of turning growth into work worth having. Ubaid Mushtaq and Aurolipsa Das are assistant professors in the Department of Economics, SRM University, Andhra Pradesh.