Narendra Modi lacks the maturity that is required to lead a country and put it on a stable path. The impression that he gives is that of a ‘man in a hurry’ with a penchant to throw around red herrings and resort to diversionary tactics to take away attention on some critical issue that is seizing the public mind. Many are the examples for this kind of behaviour by Modi but the latest in the long list is the quoting of GDP figures at an election rally in UP to an audience that probably does not even know the G of GDP.
It is not that Modi should not educate such audiences or bring them up to a common knowledge base, but seeking applause for claiming that the GDP growth of 7% proved the sceptics about demonetisation wrong is a bit too much. Modi is quick to pounce upon the first silver lining in the dark clouds of demonetisation but finds it convenient to forget the extreme negatives of the measures like the number of deaths that occurred due to the paucity of cash, daily wage workers thrown out of work, micro-finance severely affected, small industries that depend on cash unable to continue operations or having to close down because of their inability to pay suppliers used to cash transactions etc. Thus seeking plaudits for the GDP growth is deplorable more so when the figures are clearly in doubt and the credibility of the CSO more than suspect.
When every sector of the economy has been reporting bad results in the Oct – Dec 2016 quarter one cannot understand how an aggregation of these sectors that comprises the GDP can show such growth.
The agriculture sector growth is understandable coming on the back of a good monsoon but even there a 6% growth seems to be still inflated. For close to two decades now agricultural growth has not exceeded 4% so in a particular crucial quarter how could it be 6%! There is a need to verify these figures is what all self-respecting economists have said but then Modi has already branded them as the ‘Harvard kind’. This is just like Donald Trump who classifies all opinion not supportive of his positions as anti-national or ‘corporatised’ going to the extent of banning the big names in media from his last press conference calling them the projectors of ‘false or paid’ news. However we need to understand that there is a serious need in India to restore credibility to our economic indices for which the CSO should bring out a White Paper explaining the basis for calculation of each indice and the base years that are used in the computations. Otherwise we will continue to have these situations where with the Min. of Finance and the RBI putting out figures for GDP below 7% anticipating the impact of demonetisation, we have the CSO suddenly piping up with a figure in excess of 7%.
