Under PM Modi, Indian Economy Growing Fast, But Not Indians – Forbes

Indian economy under Narendra Modi is growing fast and is expected to grow even faster according to IMF World Economic Outlook. The report predicts that India’s economy will grow at 7.3% in 2018 and 7.4% in 2019, meanwhile, China’s economy will grow at 6.6% in 2018 and 6.2% in 2019. 

India’s Economy Is Expected To Beat China’s In 2018-19

Country 2017 2018 2019
China 6.9% 6.6% 6.2%
India 6.7 7.3 7.4
Emerging and developing Asia 6.5 6.5 6.3

Source: IMF: World Economic Outlook October 2018

According to the Forbes report, IMF attributes India’s strong growth to PM Modi’s policies, like the implementation of the National Goods and Service Tax (GST) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

Then there are market liberalization measures, which have assisted India to climb in a number of global rankings, including World Bank’s 2017 ranking of “ease of doing business,” where India climbed from the 130th position in 2016 to the 100th position in 2017.  And the world the World Economic Forum’s (WEFR) Global Competitiveness rankings, where India climbed 20 points in the last four years.

However, there’s something astounding about PM Modi’s policies. While they have been making the economy better, they’re making Indians worse off, said the Forbes report. In fact, as the Indian economy has climbed the world economic ladder, Indians, on the other hand, have been headed in the other direction.  That’s according to a Gallup survey, which finds that Indians’ ratings of their current lives nationwide are the worst in recent record, an average of4.0 on a 0-to-10 scale in 2017 – down from 4.4 back in 2014.

The verdicts of the research are in line with a previous Gallup survey that finds a big deterioration in the percentage of Indians who rate their lives positively enough to rate it as “flourishing” since Modi assumed office. Only 3% of Indians consider themselves thriving in 2017 compared to 14% in 2014, the reported noted.

“Beginning in 2015, rural Indians began reporting increased difficulty paying for food,” says the Gallup report. “That year, more than one in four rural Indians (28%) reported not having enough money to pay for food at some point that year (compared with 18% of urban Indians who reported the same hardship). It has increased every year since then, with 41% of rural Indians and 26% of urban Indians reporting inability to afford food in 2017.”

Obviously, India’s feverish economic growth and hot equity markets didn’t touch the masses of the Indian people. Modi has a lot of work to do to remedy this situation. Provided, of course, that he wins another term.

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