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Modi needs crash course in Entire Economic History to learn about India’s growth since 1947

Earlier India used to worry about jobless growth. But Modi government’s track record has now turned it into job loss growth.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day address was vintage Modi: grand announcements, lofty promises, and skillful avoidance of the ground realities facing India and Indians. His first term was marked with many such announcements and promises, which served as good slogans for the Bharatiya Janata Party. Unfortunately, these did not translate into actual outcomes.

Before I elucidate on different dimensions of PM Modi’s speech, I must compliment him for reading the Congress party’s manifesto and adopting some of our promises – specifically the one about establishing the office of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS). Although how the Modi government plans to operationalise this to enhance coordination between the Army, the Navy and the Air Force is still not known. But this step should improve the effectiveness of our defence capabilities and that is welcome.

Promising default growth

PM Modi’s new trick is to offer a target that will inevitably be achieved. First, it was the $5 trillion economy. If the BJP does not inflict any major demonetisation-scale damage to the economy, the underlying momentum in India’s economy will enable us to achieve the target in a few years, though not during the term of the 17th Lok Sabha. All the talk about how long it took India to achieve a $1 trillion and $2 trillion economy suggests that he needs a crash course in Entire Economic History. That would help him figure out where we started from in 1947, and how Congress governments built the foundation for growth and ushered in liberalisation which put India on an unstoppable growth trajectory.


Also read: Will Chief of Defence Staff’s role clash with that of NSA? A Lt General answers it for you


Population bogey

Second, the PM flagged the population “explosion” and how it should be a patriotic duty to fight the tide, never mind that a BJP MP advised Hindu women to have four children each. In 2000, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had in his Independence Day address spoken of the demographic dividend. A mismanaged economy, shocks of demonetisation and a hasty GST have brought us to a place where PM Modi is warning of a demographic disaster, just not in so many words. Yes, population explosion will be a major concern if we fail to provide our youth with adequate job opportunities.

The fact is that India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has been falling over decades and we will soon bring it down to the replacement rate of 2.1. Moreover, economics affects population growth in that poorer families have more children. Apart from economic growth, the most effective factor in slowing population growth is the empowerment of women through more education, delayed age of marriage and more control over their economic futures. PM Modi did not address this aspect at all, and commentators are already wondering whether the speech heralds a China-like drastic population control initiative.

Whose growth is it?

PM Modi waxed eloquent about the need to celebrate wealth creators. Unfortunately, our leading wealth creators are not finding it easy to do business. When the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power, the Tatas were acquiring brands like Jaguar and Corus Steel abroad. Now, Tata Motors is going for a partial shutdown. Job losses in the wider automobile sector have already hit 3.5 lakh people and more will come. The tragic suicide of the Café Coffee Day founder, who generated tens of thousands of jobs, but whose last letter spoke of insurmountable debt and tax terrorism, paints a sorry picture of how this government fails wealth creators.

Industries, be it of large, medium, small, or micro scale, are bearing the brunt of poor economic policies. There is not one sector today that shines bright. And yet, PM Modi continues to fail to confront our economic challenges. Market sentiments are at a historic low. National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data reveals how under the Modi government, average consumption expenditure declined unprecedentedly, in both rural and urban India.

Earlier, we used to worry about jobless growth. The Modi government’s track record has been job loss growth. Clearly, this was deliberately omitted in the speech because the PM has no answers or solutions. There is no roadmap for recovery. Hollow promises and gaming of data and indices are hardly going to help us climb out of the hole Modi has dug through demonetisation and a hasty, disruptive GST.


Also read: India’s services exports will soon beat merchandise exports. That’s nothing to celebrate


Rural crisis

PM Modi makes big promises on doubling farmers’ incomes, but this would take decades at the current rate of rural wage growth. Farmers are the losers in the BJP’s quest to keep urban consumers happy with low inflation. The Kisan Samman Nidhi provides a pittance of Rs 6,000 a year to landowners but leaves out the landless, tenant farmers and sharecroppers who are the most vulnerable.

Agricultural exports have stagnated under Modi. Under the UPA, farm exports grew exponentially from $8.7 billion in 2004-05 to $43.23 billion in 2013-14 – a change of 396 per cent. With successive years of mild growth or falling agricultural rates, farms exports fell to $33.87 billion in 2017-18 and stands at $38.73 billion in 2018-19 – a change of negative 10 per cent. Moreover, MSP growth under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) averaged at 36 per cent for major crops; under the UPA, it was 116 per cent.

Modi silent on injustices

While PM Modi claimed to be taking action against those who commit crimes against children, his record is of silence when members of his own party have been in the dock. In 2018, after the brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, BJP ministers participated in protests against the arrest of the accused.

It took nationwide outrage for the Unnao BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar to be charged with the rape of a 17-year-old teenager and the murder of her family members. The Modi government’s track record in protecting children becomes clear from one fact: under the POCSO Act, while cases registered have risen by 30 per cent, the conviction rate has gone down by 9 per cent since 2014.

He waxed eloquent on how his abrogation of Article 370 would provide the same treatment to the Dalits and tribals of Jammu and Kashmir as they get in the rest of India. Seriously, would they want what happens in the rest of India to happen to them? In Una, in Modi’s home state Gujarat, Dalits were publicly flogged. In 2018, the Modi government remained a mute spectator as the SC/ST Atrocities Act was diluted.


Also read: All lines on this route are closed: Getting my mother out of Kashmir in a lockdown


Unfavourable laws

Similarly, more than 20 lakh forest dwelling families face eviction threat because the Modi government did not adequately defend the Forest Rights Act before the Supreme Court. The government acted only after Congress state governments resisted this move in court. Moreover, private companies are taking over land in almost all tribal areas without due consultation. The government has been complicit and done little to implement Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act.

Even the legislation on triple talaq is much ado about a pronouncement already made invalid by the Supreme Court. All that the law does is criminalise a civil action and ask jailed men to ensure support to the families they left behind. If protecting deserted women was the larger goal, there was no reason to restrict this law to just Muslim women. One can clearly see an attempt to create a vote bank here.

As for the recent developments with respect to Jammu and Kashmir, we will have to wait and see how the situation unfolds and pray that peace will prevail. The people of Jammu and Kashmir, like their political leaders, are living practically under house arrest. Their communications have been cut off. In a cruel, ironic twist, they were thus spared the hollow promises and twisted historical interpretations that marked PM Modi’s address from the Red Fort.

The author is a Congress Member of Parliament. Views are personal.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Modi should do this, Modi should do that i.e. Modi should do Everything. This is what Congressees tell people. However, they themselves wouldn’t do anything except lecturing . People are smart and they are with the doer and not with the ranter.

  2. India being unique in lot of social/religious/culturally/demographically does have unique economic situation not compared to any other: for instance for GDP content only 10-15% is corporate contribution among others while non corporate players’ contribution which cannot be put under organised/unorganized sectors is ruled out every year. Having recognized the Indian situation, I do not think that Indian Polity really treat Indian economy in conventional line of treatment. Ingenuity is the need of the hour, money to govt coffers need not go through taxes or any other conventional terms, there are other means which economic planners need to trash it out. Economists who have their hands dirt dealing wit the nuances of Indian economy and understand it well, Not pragmatic to look back to past always !!!
    My 2 cents,
    Jai Hind

  3. Well written piece, but you are talking to a population that is covering in fear of an imminent Pak attack sold to them by Modi. They really have no understanding of the economy and are used to tightening the belt when things get rough. They are told that all their troubles are due to Nehru and Congress and Modi will take them out of their misery. They still believe him because he says he should be given 60 years like they gave the Congress. It is a tough situation. Once the shit hits the ceiling in terms of economic collapse, Modi will have another dream to sell.

    • @N Rao

      Fascists like you who think you are intellectually superior and we are dumb people fetch more votes for BJP/ Modi. Your arrogance that you are very smart and Modi voter is dumb what ensured 300+ seats.

  4. One remains a little sceptical about the phrase Jobless growth. Each major invention since the Industrial Revolution has evoked fears that jobs would be lost to machines, but employment has grown continuously. Consider the case of the US, a post industrial society, mainly services now, adding a couple of hundred thousand jobs each month, with growth in the 2 – 3 % range. Had India been growing at 6 – 7%, if not higher, as claimed, millions of jobs would have been getting created each year, not necessarily in the formal sector. God – and the CIA station chief in Delhi – knows our true rate of growth. If we took care of that, employment would not have been in such dismal shape.

  5. Well written and lot of valid points, but can the opposition take these talking points forward to the general population in an effective manner? Merely writing a couple of such articles may not help carry the oppositions message to the public.

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