: The India Fix: Can welfare populism help BJP counter the damage done by a failing economy? #IndiaNEWS Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal, a newsletter on Indian politics. To get it in your

The India Fix: Can welfare populism help BJP counter the damage done by a failing economy? #IndiaNEWS
Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal, a newsletter on Indian politics. To get it in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Have feedback, interesting links or memes? Send them to shoaib@scroll.in.One of the paradoxes of Modi’s popularity has been the fact that his seven years in power have coincided with some dismal economic indicators.Let’s take a look at India’s gross domestic product. The first seven years of the United Progressive Alliance clocked a growth rate of 8.4% per annum. Modi’s first seven years, on the other hand saw only 4.8%. Not only has the official GDP growth rate declined consistently, former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian argues that growth was negative even before Covid-19 arrived on the scene.Industrial growth in India is lacklustre. Unlike many other countries in east and southeast Asia, the country has been unable to move people out of agriculture and into manufacturing. In fact, remarkably, since 2016, jobs in manufacturing have gone down and those in agriculture have risen. One outcome of this is that India’s labour force participation rate – the proportion of the adult population working or actively looking for jobs – is now among the worst in the world. Even Pakistan, not exactly an economic powerhouse, manages to edge past India on this parameter.

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