India 2019: Who to vote for?(part #1)
As 2019 general elections are around the corner, I was trying to find ways to measure the performance of the current BJP government. This would be a pointless exercise, if I had already made up my mind. But I haven’t, so figured would post my findings here, in the hope that, I can be informed by the “internet community” if there are other perspectives that I may be missing in my assessment. If the public discourse is anything like what I have at home, then it’s clear that a rational discussion is often difficult to sustain, given the intense polarisation of positions. And needless to say most news sources often leave much to be desired in terms of factual accuracy. It’s been a challenge to find reliable data to evaluate the governments performance. So, I started with the BJPs 2014 manifesto. Side note: regardless of which side you happen to be on, a manifesto must give you appreciation for the enormity of the challenge that lies ahead for any party, governing a democracy the size of India. It’s a task, that’s quite un-paralleled.
I’ll attempt to share over multiple posts, some of the top promises from the manifesto, and data I have found to assess the government’s performance on the same, largely so I can be informed if there are other perspectives that I may be missing when looking at the data.
Starting with: Price rise.
Here’s what I found:
Inflation in developing countries like India, to a large extent is influenced by food prices. So, not surprisingly, food inflation shows a similar downward trend since 2014:
So, I wondered if the lower food (minimum support) prices, might be adversely impacting agricultural GDP:
But don’t see that reflected in the agriculture GDP over the same period.
So, overall, agriculture GDP has continued to grow, while food inflation has been (kept) under control.
That seems largely a good thing. Though, given the agrarian distress with farmers marching onto the capital in protest, it’s relevant to also look at how farmers have fared under the same time frame.
(No suicide data has been made available beyond 2015 by the NCRB. So, it’s difficult to assess how much of the recent distress is indicative of whether the situation has worsened, in the last couple of years)
So, data seems to indicate that the suicide rates were coming down, with the lowest in recent years in 2013 (year before the current government came into power), with a marginal rise over the next couple of years (2014–15). So, no alarming signs, besides, the fact that the agrarian crisis continues to be sidelined in the national agenda, regardless of which government is in power.
Now, let’s look at farm income:
As can be seen, farm income growth hasn’t kept up with non-farm income growth over the years.
However, the farm income growth appears to have deteriorated under the current administration. Which may explain the farm distress and the subsequent march on the capital by the farmers union.
The PM’s response to this has been to “double farmers income by 2022”. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=180802. Whether that’s a pipe dream or reality only time will tell.
One last graph to also consider when evaluating inflation is the price of crude oil. The current administration clearly has had the good fortune to have favourable crude oil prices for much of its 5 years in office. So, it’s hard to tell how much of the price control has been an outcome of effective policy measures vs favourable macroeconomic conditions.
So, to be honest, I am not sure, how to rate the governments performance on on price rise.Is it reasonable to conclude that the government has “Moderately Fulfilled” its manifesto promise, given that it has managed to keep prices and inflation under control, but hasn’t done so in a way that has been economically beneficial for farmers as well? Thoughts?
Next up: Employment & Entrepreneurship
