The projection of the nation’s growth to a $5trillion economy and hopes of it being a super power by year 2047 marking the century of India’s Independence are often met with cynicism. The ground realities project a different picture. India’s growth since Independence and more so after the liberalization since the early 1990s benefited just 10 percent of what is now a 1.40 billion population. The 20 percent forming the middle class marginally benefited and the rest 70 per cent are satisfied with crumbs in the form of free ration, subsidies, doles and other welfare steps. A prominent agency doing periodic analysis of market trends has come up with a report that testifies to this.
Worse, the scenario is steadily deteriorating as far as the cause of social uplift is concerned. The report says India has been getting increasingly more unequal, with the top 10 per cent holding about 58 per cent of the national income, compared to their share of 34 per cent in 1990 – about the time the economic Liberalization started. The strategies adopted during the past 35 years – or nearly half the term since Independence – made the poor poorer and the rich richer. Curiously, Prime Minister Modi and his team are silent on such reversals of the ordinary man’s fortunes. The report also notes that the rich benefited more in the post Covid-19 phase, while the middle class and the poor got a raw deal from governmental management of the economy, resulting in a situation in which they largely lost the purchasing power. Homes that can afford to make ends meet now constitute 18 per cent of the population compared with 40 per cent five years ago. Salaries have hardly increased in the past over 10 years, with Covid-19 cited as the excuse by the private sector while governmental staff or the bureaucracy manage to have regular pay hikes and extract more benefits from the government through multiple means. Signs of an oligarchy running the affairs of the nation under different shades and through the system of a manipulated ‘democracy’ are all too pronounced.
As the report notes, India’s consuming class is not widening as much as it is “deepening” – meaning the rich are becoming richer while the number of the rich is not growing. In real terms, those who can afford to liberally do purchases form only some 14 crores of the 1.4billion population. The rest lead a hand-to-mouth existence, tightening their belts, or are remaining poor, weak and famished. Whether the saffron drum-beaters that keep mouthing the “Bharat Mahaan” slogan and doing much less to uplift the disadvantaged, being mindful of such ground realities, is a big question. Failure to create more job opportunities, harness the productive forces and invoke their inner energy –and instead feeding them with crumbs – means the goal of India becoming a developed nation will remain a mirage.
