New Delhi: An opinion piece in Japanese news magazine Nikkei Asia, ‘India’s ruling BJP is not talking enough about the economy’, scrutinises the economic promises made by the BJP in its election manifesto.
The manifesto, while promising to make India the third-largest economy, “offers no detail on how Modi would make that happen”, says the piece by Ritesh Kumar Singh, corporate economist and former assistant director of the Finance Commission of India. While laying down an “active agenda” on non-economic issues, the manifesto paints a “rosy picture” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s past economic successes but “conveniently sidesteps” how macroeconomic challenges will be dealt with.
Becoming the third-largest economy is not difficult for India, but the country faces challenges due to “widening income and wealth inequality”, says Singh. The piece identifies some of these challenges—sticky inflation, unemployment among educated youth, the presence of the informal business sector, and sluggish demand, with only a nominal expansion in consumption.
The piece says India has the “world’s lowest workforce participation”, ranking 143 in the per capita income category. Only GDP growth will not be “sufficient to ensure the nation’s economic health”, and even if India “becomes the world’s third-largest economy, it will remain a poor country”, it concludes.
The South China Morning Post’s Biman Mukherji brings perspectives of economists in ‘Doubts swirl as India aims to be a developed economy by 2047: There is a big gap’. The report claims that PM Modi has an “assortment of obstacles to surmount” as the BJP manifesto “vowed to accelerate India’s infrastructure development and transform the country into a global manufacturing powerhouse”.
While India is growing faster than China, the report claims that the gains are shown as “a personal achievement” of the PM. “Part of the reason for the Indian prime minister’s enduring popularity at home is that he has been ‘very protective’ of local industries,” Antonio Fatas, an economics professor at INSEAD business school, tells the SCMP.
Despite its growth, “a host of legacy issues that could hinder investments still need to be tackled for India to achieve developed nation status” and that requires the lifting up of “all sectors of society, including the poorest and those living in remote area” to ensure a better per capita GDP. There is a need to prioritise land and labour reforms and create jobs, the report quotes economists as saying.
“A developed nation’s per capita income per year is about US$10,000-US$11,000. Right now, we are a little over US$2,500,” says N.R. Bhanumurthy. Global investment is the talk, but it is “tough to do business in India”, Debashis Basu, a chartered accountant, author and portfolio manager, says.
Anchal Vohra, columnist at the Foreign Policy, analyses the employment situation in India in her piece — ‘Modi’s Make in India didn’t make jobs’. About India’s “uneven growth story”, Vohra talks about the infrastructure development in the country with new highways and metros but adds that the promise of 100 million jobs under Make in India and small towns having a cosmopolitan lifestyle are still distant ideas.
The author invokes the ILO data on unemployment among the educated group in the country. “Those without university degrees or even full schooling have a higher employment rate,” says the piece.
The quality of education, the reversal of structural transformation, and the non labour-intensive manufacturing are to blame, suggests the piece, with Vohra quoting economists such as Aasheerwad Dwivedi and Raghuram Rajan’s Bloomberg interview. One of Make in India’s aims was to boost the manufacturing sector, but “the government focused on too many sectors and too few were labour-intensive” and a new GST “created disequilibrium” as well, according to Dwivedi. The pandemic shocks, he claims, led to many working-age Indians going back to the farm sector. Moreover, there is a need for higher government spending on quality education to make the “workforce employable” and “create jobs”. But, these policy flaws have little affected Modi’s popularity as many Indians want him reelected to fulfil the promises he made, Vohra suggests.
“Modi is both favourite teacher and empathetic friend, speaking directly to his listeners and selected callers,” writes Mujib Mashal in a New York Times report — ‘Why Is Narendra Modi So Popular? Tune In to Find Out’ — where the Times bureau chief for South Asia addresses PM’s ‘Mann Ki Baat’.
The report says Modi, on his radio show, connects “the local with the national and the global” on topics such as water scarcity, exam stress, and international events where India commands the spotlight.
The agenda, Mashal writes, is set carefully by “choosing what to elevate — but equally by deciding what to keep a distance from”. While he has never held a full-fledged news conference, the radio show and its clippings ‘blasted’ on social media is one of the ways the PM has “made himself intimately omnipresent across India’s vastness, exerting a hold on the national imagination that seems impervious to criticism of his government’s erosion of India’s democratic norms”, says the report.
It goes on to say that “a participatory sense is built into the show” as the PM, every month, asks the audience on social media to suggest the show’s themes and interacts with callers every episode. The show combines his greatest strengths—his “understanding of India’s grassroots” and “populist mastery of storytelling”, it adds.
In The Globe and Mail’s daily podcast Decibel, journalist Menaka Raman-Wilms speaks to Sanjay Ruparelia, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, about the importance of the Indian elections and its impact on global order.
Ruparelia highlights the importance of Indian elections to the world, particularly Canada, for two reasons—the sheer weight of the country demographically, economically and politically, and the people-to-people relations with Canada. Indians are, he says, “in every walk of Canadian life”. Indians form the largest share of foreign students in Canada, and one in every five immigrants in Canada has Indian roots.
India’s current election is interesting as it could lead to a “hegemonic phase of Hindu nationalism” if PM Modi wins another term, says Ruparelia. But, he also says that Modi’s government broke the era of coalitions and flagship schemes to modernise the economy, with the Digital India and Make in India campaigns making him popular. Many of his schemes, Ruparelia notes, “were first introduced by previous governments, but the Modi government is good at scaling and implementing”. “While jobs and growth were not met as promised, benefits were received by people” through infrastructure projects and banking initiatives, he says.
Indian elections have “splintered” votes for the opposition, says Ruparelia as he explains the INDIA alliance to Canadian audiences. Born out of “existential threat”, its limitation lies in the regional influence of its parties and the contest between them for particular seats.
Talking about Canada’s relations with India, he says — “A lot of work needs to be done” — suggesting re-calibration of the ties between the two nations, especially after recent strains. Irrespective of the government in power, India feels it is a rising power, which Canada and the West need to consider while maintaining ties, he says. With a “populist leader like Modi”, the stakes are high as the world still views India as a counter to China.
The Guardian, in its report, ‘Tesla shares under pressure after carmaker announces price cuts’, discusses Elon Musk postponing his India visit ahead of price cuts by Tesla. Tesla has been facing pressures “amid slowing global demand for EVs and pressure on prices from Chinese rivals”, and a cloud now hangs over Musk’s India visit, projected as a step to counter Chinese competition by expanding into India.
Pakistani newspaper Dawn, in a piece by Manzoor Ahmad, a senior fellow at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, calls Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s “resumption of trade ties with India” a significant stride towards “fostering peace in the region”.
The piece, ‘Normalising trade with India’, refers to economic relations with India as a step to revitalise Pakistan’s economy by expanding trade, reducing inflation, and saving foreign exchange. “Many countries,” Ahmad writes, “have border disputes yet continue trading”. Pakistan should take the first step by lifting the ban, and India should reciprocate, he suggests.
A glance at record-high military spending & Bogota protests
Global military spending has reached an all-time high, informs the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. To know who the biggest spenders are and why they are pushing for such expenditure, read this DW report.
At least 70,000 people demonstrated in Bogota to protest President Gustavo Petro’s proposed economic and social reforms. This is not the first and only protest — read more in Al Jazeera’s report.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: India 4th highest military spender, China at $296 billion second only to US, says SIPRI report