New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants India to be a Five Trillion Dollar economy by the year 2024. The year assumes significance because the same year he will seek reelection. Again he will get a chance to blow the economic trumpet to woo the electorate. Wishing for something bigger is good, but they should be more pragmatic. The government needs to direct all its resources and efforts at achieving the target and not indulging in data manipulation.
Experts associated with Indian economy and holding positions at the helm of affairs are seeing Modi’s Five Trillion Dollar dream a ploy to distract the ground reality. The state of Economy is in doldrums and the situation is going down every quarter.
India needs to grow at a rate of 12 percent annually to achieve the five trillion dollar status. And at present India is growing at the rate of about six to seven percent – which is again disputed by many.
With lowest GDP growth in last five years and employment rates breaking all records in the down side, the government needs to act on improving the sentiment and reverse the fear factor. India’s Index of Industrial Production showed a growth of 1.2 per cent in June 2019 as compared to 6.8% in June 2018.
Growth in capital goods sector is down from 9.7 percent in June 2018 to -6.5 percent in June 2019. Likewise, the manufacturing sector of the country grew with a mere 1.2 percent compared to 6.9 percent in 2018. The automobile sector is bleeding due to the slowdown in the country.
According to some sources the auto sector has been in crises and about three lakh fifty thousand people have been laid off from across the country. This has added to the already dwindling unemployment rate of the country. India’s jobless rate rose to 7.51% in July 2019 from 5.6 last year. According to SIAM, The production of passenger cars, utility vehicles and vans decreased by 23.32 percent, 4.53 percent and 25.66 percent, respectively, in the first quarter of 2019.
The country’s manufacturing, mining and power generation sectors saw their outputs decline in June 2019 by 1.2 percent, 1.6 percent and 8.2 per cent respectively. India’s Industrial growth as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), stagnated at 2 percent in June 2019, when compared to 7 per cent in June 2018. This shows a grim picture of the Indian economy which needs immediate attention. But there seems to be policy paralysis and uncertainty in the highest level.