Whichever party wins the election, the real long-term challenge is to stem the rot of institutional foundations.
The headlines say that the ruling party manifesto emphasises nationalism (“nation first”), and, on the economic front, it will aspire to make India the third-largest economy in the world by the end of the next decade, to make it reach the list of top 50 countries in the ranking of Ease of Doing Business, and repeats the old promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.
In the West, there is an old saying that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. But what do foreigners know about the glories of Hindu nationalism? Gandhiji regarded armed nationalism a “curse”. Tagore wrote in 1908: “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I’ll not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I’ll never allow patriotism to triumph as long as I live”. But both Gandhiji and Tagore are long dead.
On the economic front, while most economists believe that, whichever party is in power, unless there is some disaster, India will be the third-largest economy in the world by the end of the next decade, there is hardly any respectable economist who believes that as things have been going, farmers’ income can be doubled by 2022 — it’s just a “jumla”.
The current government puts a lot of value on India’s place in the World Bank’s ranking on Ease of Doing Business, and took a victory lap when it improved significantly in recent years. (It is not particularly hard to “game” the system, as we know that it is based on data collected from only two cities, Mumbai and Delhi. The Chinese are even better than us in gaming it, they had an even larger increase in the ranks in the same years). Nevertheless, an improvement in those ranks is a good sign.
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