PM Modi can put lipstick on a pig but the fact is India now behind even Bangladesh

[Crystal-Clear]

If the snake got its lesson, we Indians can focus on economic progress. Please bite as a confirmation.

that bite of cow's bheja fry was delicious.

 

[Jobless Jack]

Opinion
PM Modi can put lipstick on a pig but the fact is India now behind even Bangladesh

By Aakar Patel
January 24, 2021 at 8:00 AM

We have entered the 13th consecutive quarter of economic slowdown in India. Gross Domestic Product, meaning the total value of services and goods produced in this country in the last 12 months, shrunk in 2020-2021 against 2019-2020. We made less than we did the previous year. To return to where we were in January 2020, it will take perhaps another year. Perhaps longer, we do not know.

The problem did not begin with Covid; it existed much before that. Growth began declining from January 2018 and has declined sequentially, meaning every quarter since then. The government has tried to tweak some of the numbers, something that Americans refer to as “putting lipstick on a pig” but to no avail. It is sequential decline over three years. The India growth story is over and has been over for a few years now. You can make all the speeches you want but you cannot argue against 39 straight months of slowing.

Speaking loudly of competing with China and America but then falling behind even Bangladesh’s per capita GDP does not inspire confidence. The fact is that even without the lockdown we were in crisis, a word that is used loosely but can be said to be accurate here. The government has no idea why the economy began to stall from January 2018. There are theories from the outside, but they are not discussed or debated in government — who will tell the King that his rule is incompetent? Nobody, unless they want to lose their head (or at least their job) and so we continue to bumble on, along the same path that has brought us to this disaster.

The signs of our decay are all around us. Work that has left China because of Trump’s trade war and Covid has not come to India but to Vietnam and Bangladesh. Our neighbour has crept ahead of us in per capita GDP because its exports (powered by high-labour intensive garment manufacturing) are growing while ours have not grown since 2014. We have six years of zero growth in exports. It is also ahead because it has much higher participation of women in the labour force.

In India, the patriarchy is more concerned about who Indians marry rather than why they are not working. India is the most dangerous place for women in the world. According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation World’s Most Dangerous Countries for Women, we were at fourth place in 2011 and then fell to last place in 2018, where presumably we remain. The low participation of women in the workforce has many complex reasons, but the failure of the State and indeed the inability of this current government to stop the slide further, is also responsible.

We have more of the same to look forward to in 2021. We will not see the economy pick up but we will see more bombast from the government about how well we are doing. The enormous hole in the economy that was created in the first quarter of last year (April-June) because of the lockdown will have been filled over the last few months. When results for the same quarter year on year appear sometime in the middle of 2021, Modi will exclaim that we are the world’s fastest growing economy and pretend that the 25% increase is not just the filing up of a hole he himself created but some miracle he has delivered to the Indian economy.

The Economist reported that Mukesh Ambani’s wealth rose 350% in 2020 and Gautam Adani’s rose over 700%, but we are at record unemployment, which is hovering around the 9% mark. And it is not higher still only because many crore Indians have removed themselves from the job market. Those who are not employed and not actively looking for work are not considered unemployed. The real figure could be approaching 15% and perhaps even higher than that.

On every conceivable metric that you can think of, from bank credit growth, to automobile sale, the revelation is not only that there is no India growth story but there is a decline that has set us back years, perhaps a decade. And yet the triumphalism carries on. The BJP won almost half the seats of West Bengal in 2019 and one will be very surprised if they do not win the election there later this year. The amount of resource they have because of the electoral bonds and because of the broad support Modi receives from corporate India cannot be matched by any other party and cannot be matched by all other parties put together. Another state will fall to the BJP, and if it doesn’t this time then certainly it will the next.

Elsewhere, society has been torn apart, most likely in a way that cannot ever be repaired. I am not saying this out of despair but one has to be realistic. This amount of poison being injected from the top cannot be detoxified without resistance and one sees no resistance to it.
On every parameter, from economic decline to national security failure to unemployment to social tensions, India will continue in the path that it has chosen for itself since 2014. But at least Modi will continue to be popular, making his daily sermons about how much better things are under him and how bad it was in the past.
(Views expressed are author’s own)

PM Modi can put lipstick on a pig but the fact is India now behind even Bangladesh

He can make all the speeches he wants but cannot argue against 39 straight months of economic slowdown. Ironically, he can still speak loudly how much better things are under him and how bad they were in the past

www.google.com

What are you on about? He tried to look like tagore... Ended up looking like asram bapu

 

[xeuss]

I'd trust him over Nirmala Tai.

Irrelevant who is the Finance Min. Everything is run from the PMO.

 

[Jackdaws]

Irrelevant who is the Finance Min. Everything is run from the PMO.

Lol. That guy is capable of running a race alone and awarding himself a gold medal.

 

[TsAr]

He is a chartered accountant not an economist. He will make the things worse.

Oh Yes, we once had a chartered accountant Ishaq Dollar and he really Phucked up the sconomy

 

[gulli]

I admire your honesty.

South Asians really need to grow up and stop using religion as a tool for hatred and division.

However, as the largest nation in the region India must lead by example.

Education is the key.

If education is the key than say good bye to Congress or left politics good bye for ever.

 

[mudas777]

Do you realize that the anti-Muslim hate is mostly perpetuated from the educated upper and middle classes? Education is not the key!

Nazi's had educated people too that's how they build their war machine and waged wars. India needs to get rid of the Godi media, ban RSS as a terrorist organization and get rid of the current regime. Bring back Mohan Singh or similar calibre man by executive order for next next 10 years and wheels of progress will be back for India. As far as Pakistan is concerned longer fascist Modi stays the more chances are India implode from with in and it can't be that bad. His whole regime is set up on a hatred philosophy and how you can run a country when 24/7 one is thinking for digging others graves and size of the graves.