It is a different matter that CII's survey of 524 members across a spectrum of industry revealed that there was no evidence of the `feel good' factor. While 47 per cent of the survey respondents felt that the general business conditions would worsen, 37 per cent expected that the current poor trends would continue -- only 16 per cent feltthings would improve in the next six months. Another survey, released by broking house HSBC Securities today, also echoed the CII line and predicted that growth this year would be low. A few days ago, the private sector database CMIE had lowered its growth target for this year to 4.5 per cent.

What is surprising, one of the economists who attended today's meeting pointed out, is that while Vajpayee correctly identified all the problems facing the economy, he offered no real solution to how these were to be tackled, but still continued to say that the economy would do better this year than it did last year.

The fiscal deficit, Vajpayee said, posed serious problems for the economy. He added that the losses in PSUs were a fiscal drain and could not be afforded. The World Development Report, he said, served as a rude reminder that we had neglected the social sector and human resource development.

Vajpayee dwelt at length on the global economic crisis and said that the worst was not yet over. Theinternational institutions, he said, had still not fully understood the full ramifications of the crisis.

In the event, Vajpayee left his high-profile team of economists as tough a task as he did last month with his star-studded team of industrialists, to ensure that growth touched 8 per cent over the next three years.

Not expecting any immediate response, Vajpayee said that in the long run, he hoped that the council would be a good sounding board to inculcating awareness in the government on the different points of view on key economic issues and in shaping perceptions on policy changes of immediate concern.

In other words, one of the members of the council pointed out, the prime minister hoped that the council would come up with arguments which would convince Vajpayee's colleagues of the need to take some drastic measures such as cutting expenditure on subsidies.

Other members of the PM's council are I G Patel, P N Dhar, Ashok Desai, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Arjun Sengupta and G V Ramakrishna. TheDeputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Finance Secretary Vijay Kelkar and Reserve Bank Governor Bimal Jalan are special invitees to the council.