While the tall claims of successive governments about the economic growth of India are taken with a pinch of salt, international agencies like the International Monetary Fund can perhaps be trusted to come up with a more realistic analysis. On this premise, the latest observation from the monetary fund that the nation has achieved a historic economic milestone by doubling its GDP from $2.1 trillion in 2015 to 4.3 trillion by now should add a feather to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cap. These were, principally his years, and it must be acknowledged that the national economy has not faced any major shocks during this period, except for the Covid-19 impact. Projections are that India can overtake Japan this year and Germany next year if it carried on with the present pace of growth. There, however, is no way India can aspire to outwit the two other major economies – those of the US and China — in the foreseeable future.
It is well-acknowledged that the Indian economy remained more or less stable in the past 20 years, and did reasonably well since the early 1990s, when Narasimha Rao as PM and Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister, squarely faced a major economic mess. They shipped India’s gold abroad as security for huge loans, to conduct day-to-day business of the government. Their Liberalization push, which rooted out the outdated Socialistic controls, released the national economy from suffocation. The 30 years of push by successive governments took India to this level. Singh as PM knew how to refashion the national economy. Yet, in his last years, the economy showed signs of some strain and GDP growth slumped. Under Modi, it went down further, and Covid years came as another hit. Yet, overall, it must be stated that the NDA government too acted positively on the economic front.
However, a grim aspect about India’s economic growth is that the “growth” per se is mostly limited to the top 10, or even 20 per cent of the population, who are well-entrenched in government, businesses and in fields like IT. The rest of Indians, forming about 80 per cent, of the population continue having a hand-to-mouth existence. Their life has not changed in any meaningful way. Poverty as such has been tackled with the subsidized ration system and the rural employment guarantee programme, both introduced during the Congress-led UPA terms. This is keeping the poor in a complacent mood. Their emancipation is a far cry. Modi carried on with his governance in the traditional Congress style. The PM is being guided by the RSS, which is neither progressive nor open-minded in its approach, hence there’s a limit to what he can do in terms of reforming the systems. Systems are hugely being manipulated by vested interests including the corrupt bureaucrats. With a population mass of 1.4billion, their collective energies should take India to the world’s top super power status. What the nation lacks is strong leadership.
