Tejas Ajay Joshi
Nov 6 · 4 min read

India’s economy is crashing and the incumbent Government isn’t ready to accept.

It all started when India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared on TV on 8th Nov, 2016. In unprecedented move of Demonetisation, he banned all the currency notes of 500 & 1000 Rs. denominations. To add more misery to it, he made stringent withdrawal rules @for bank account holders in the following months of this disastrous and unthought measure. He promised that his intentions were pure and he as always, was targeting the black money holders. He also notably quoted that this will break the spine of cross-border terrorism and diminishing naxal movement. When banks kept changing the withdrawal rules after demonetisation, Modi pushed the agenda of Digital India ahead. The particular issue was never even raised once in his first speech on the day of announcement of demonetisation. Critics claim that Modi had to shift agenda again and again since there was a continuous distress in country because of the difficulties people had to face while standing in the ques outside ATMs. To add more vigour to that, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made it a issue of nationalism where they claimed that if the Army Personnel of our country can put their lives at stake for us, why can’t we stand in a que to make the country corruption free. While performing all this charade, Modi was undoubtedly targeting the largest assembly elections of the country, Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Modi used the entire government machinery to implement a policy that was really unnecessary and unasked for. But BJP was very vocal about the changes Demonetisation was going to bring in the country. And it helped them. They won the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

3 years down the line, we are running backwards.

According to August 30, 2018’s report of Economic Times, almost 99.30% of banned currency came back to Reserve Bank of India (RBI). If dark or black money removal was the priority of this operation, it certainly bombed. There were no significant reports of people being arrested for holding illegal money. The cross-border terrorism increased including some ghastly attacks on Indian forces. So the Government failed on their second front as well. In case of rise in Income Tax contribution, it tends to variably increase every year and that cannot be put forth as a benefit of demonetisation. Digital India is a scheme that lacks enormous amount of resources to connect to the rural India with advanced technology. The poor and downtrodden doesn’t even have basic resources such as food, clothing and shelter. Instead of focusing on providing these resources to them, the government is trying to force them to adapt the technology they aren’t even aware of. A daily wage employee who earns 100–150rs a day cannot afford to have a smartphone on which he can use the BHIM UPI for buying things.

Not diverting from the topic, I want you to understand the warnings that the scholars issued after demonetisation. Former RBI chief, Raghuram Rajan blasted the move saying it will paralyze the Indian economy. Former Prime Minister and Economist Dr. Manmohan Singh echoed the same view as Raghuram Rajan. But BJP government was adamant to implement this blunder of a policy decision that would come back haunting the Indians after 3 years.

Indian economy started raising eyebrows across the world when it fell flat to 5% in GDP growth after June quarter of 2019. It was the lowest in 6 years.

Since then, it’s been chaos.

Indian automobile industry faced the flack very first — with rapid decline in sales and thus, reputed companies stopping production for days and weeks. It’s said that this crisis has seen a lay-off of around 1 lakh employees in automobile sector. Government of India was initially rejecting the news. But when the Industry association started putting advertisement in newspapers asking the Government for the help, the finance minister had to come out and address the issue. Since then, there have been number of press conferences and policy changes which really doesn’t seem to be working. The core industrial sector of India had seen a growth of -o.5% in August. It declined to -5.2% growth in September.

If these numbers don’t raise an alarm, I don’t know what will.

There’s an agrarian crisis in all corners of the country. The value of rupee is continuously falling against the US dollar. The government of India had to borrow the reserves from the RBI. Despite all these adverse conditions, the Government is busy playing the agenda politics of religiousness and nationalism.

Indian economy needs a revival. And if it doesn’t get one, things can go really bad for India in future.

In the latest development, State Bank of India (SBI) has warned that the GDP growth of India might fall below 5%.

Indian economy needs urgent repairing, but does the current government really care?

    Tejas Ajay Joshi

    Written by

    Tejas is an Engineer by profession but a writer by passion. He, through his writing,mostly rants about the socio-political scenario of his country.

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