Faltering economy, poorer citizens, South Asia’s bully: The reality of India’s global ambitions

This is the first of a two-part series on how India is seen by the citizens of other South Asian countries. Read the first part here.

India may be large in terms of size, but it is the quality of life of its 1,425,775,850 citizens that matters. The Narendra Modi government must make an effort at humility, given that India’s economy is not exactly pulsating with energy; youth unemployment is high; farmers agitate despite harsh measures of suppression; and large sections of industry, notably the micro, small and medium enterprises, are yet to recover from the double disaster of demonetisation and the Covid lockdown.

Economist Ashoka Mody noted “a cataclysmic regression” in employment in India, with 70 million Indians “having sought work in the deeply unproductive segments of Indian agriculture”.

Indians have become poorer under Modi’s decade of rule, so much so that the government of India last November decided to supply free grain rations to 800 million citizens for the next five years. In 2023, the Global Hunger Index ranked India 111 among 125 countries, whereas Pakistan stood at 102, Bangladesh at 81, Nepal at 69, and Sri Lanka at 60. This should be the cause of soul-searching by India’s polity rather than arrogance and interventionism.

False gold

New Delhi should scrutinise...

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