Lies, Damned Lies, And Statistics

First things first. This column owes its all to two explanatory articles by Udit Mishra of The Indian Express published sequentially in the wake of Prime Minister Modi's assertion before the US Congress that India was already at position five in the size of its GDP, and then after Modi assured the nation at the inauguration of the Bharat Mandapam in July that "during the third term of our government, India will be among the top three economies of the world"

Fair enough, even the IMF says so.

But what has been hidden by Modi is that the growth rate in India has dropped by one hundred percentage points between 2004-2014 and the nine years that Modi has been PM. For we grew under Dr Manmohan Singh by 183 per cent in the UPA decade and that decennial growth rate has fallen by exactly 100 percentage points to 83 per cent in the Modi years. Had the Manmohan rate of growth been maintained, we would have overtaken Germany and Japan, the current two and three, many years ago. Our present ranking is thus much more the contribution of Manmohanomics than Modinomics.