The nation’s media, present in full force at the annual conference of the World Economic Forum (WEF), dutifully relayed back to India sound bytes uttered by the allies of the world’s giant corporations. Among these was the laudatory statement by the WEF’s President that India was a $10 trillion economy in the making. This is only the most recent of a spate of predictions on the future size of India’s economy. At least it can be said for them that it is India’s own leaders who were the first to make these. Thus, in 2019, upon returning to office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India aimed to become a $5 trillion economy by 2024, which would have been the end of his current term.
That this has not materialised as yet has not deterred other political leaders from making predictions of, or expressing an aspiration for, a $1 trillion economy for their States. This includes the Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Though these leaders represent political parties with widely differing social agendas and ideologies, they seem united in their economic goals. From Davos to Lucknow and Chennai, never before has growth dominated the economic agenda in democracies. This bears mentioning, as a democracy is also meant to deliver other things.
Growth is a legitimate aspiration in India where the majority of the population is yet to attain a reasonable standard of living. Indeed, it should remain on the table so long as this is the case. The point, though, is that going all out for economic size may not do much by way of levelling the income of the presently excluded even as it may generate outcomes that are undesirable to all. Such outcomes are already in evidence in India, and an economic policy that privileges growth could exacerbate them.
