What happened to Modi’s $5 trillion economy promise?

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Las week, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in Parliament that India’s gross domestic product would hit the $5 trillion mark in 2029.

It’s a banal projection predicated on the simple maths of compounding. The Indian economy, valued at nearly $4 trillion, is growing so it will inevitably touch that mark one day. Yet, most Indians will be hit by an uncomfortable sense of deja vu when they read the phrase “$5 trillion economy”. It has functioned as a leitmotif of the Modi era, meant mostly to gaslight Indians about the true state of the economy.

Like a parent trying to stave off a child’s tantrum by promising something desirable in the future, the Modi government has repeatedly flashed the prospect of a “$5 trillion economy” to Indians with little explanation on how it would to be achieved – and no explanation when it wasn’t.

Tall claims

At the start of 2018, Modi kicked it off by promising at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that India would...

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