Even as the freight lines open and the cranes swing over skylines that did not have them, conversations in some circles, typically elite ones, now carry a refrain that has stopped being a question.<\/p>\n
Whenever the discussion on the Indian economy comes up, someone says: “But where is the growth?”<\/p>\n
A good quarter might be conceded. One or two sectors might be allowed to have done well. But it is quickly followed by the chorus, “Yes, yes. But where is the growth?”<\/p>\n
The conversation has become a kind of nursery rhyme, and a particularly strange one, because holding on to it now requires an extraordinary act of not looking.<\/p>\n
There was an economy whose nominal output rose from about Rs 124 lakh crore to around Rs 346 lakh crore in a decade, with exports reaching roughly $860 billion. India has been the fastest-growing major economy for much of this period. The latest release, out this week, showed real GDP growing 7.8 per cent in the June quarter, ahead of the Reserve Bank of India’s forecast of 7 per cent and the consensus estimate of 7.1 per cent.<\/p>\n
“Yes, but is that real growth?”<\/p>\n
There was a banking system whose bad loans, once the books were finally opened honestly, rose above 11 per cent. Banks were called zombies.<\/p>\n
Gross non-performing assets are now below 2 per cent, banks are profitable, and credit is expanding. The companies that spent those years repairing themselves are compounding too: the June quarter delivered 18 per cent Nifty profit growth, the best in ten quarters, with 19 sectors beating estimates and mid-cap and small-cap earnings growing faster still.<\/p>\n
“But that’s just the stock market.”<\/p>\n
There was a railway that had electrified barely a fifth of its network in seven decades and has now electrified 99.6 per cent of its broad-gauge network. Consequential train accidents fell from 135 a year to 16. Metro rail went from 248 kilometres in five cities to over 1,000 kilometres across 26 cities.<\/p>\n
A country with no dedicated freight corridor has now commissioned 2,843 kilometres of one. There were 74 airports; there are now 165. There were 91,287 kilometres of national highways; there are now 1,46,572.<\/p>\n
“But can a bullock cart use an expressway?”<\/p>\n
There was a power sector with 2.8 gigawatts of solar. India now has more than 164. Non-fossil sources have crossed half of the installed electricity capacity, years ahead of the target India had set itself. Rural electricity supply has risen from 12.5 hours a day to more than 22.<\/p>\n
A generation is growing up that has never done homework by candlelight.<\/p>\n
“But what will people do with electricity?”<\/p>\n
Seventeen per cent of rural homes had a tap; the figure is now above 80. Sanitation went from 39 per cent to near-universal coverage on the back of 12 crore toilets. Medical colleges have gone from 387 to 846, and MBBS seats from 51,348 to nearly 1,40,000. Life expectancy is 72 years, the highest ever recorded here.<\/p>\n
And by the World Bank’s own count, extreme poverty fell from 27.1 per cent to 5.3 per cent between 2011-12 and 2022-23. That is about 269 million people.<\/p>\n
“But those are schemes, not growth.”<\/p>\n
There was a payments system that barely existed a decade ago and now handles roughly half of all real-time digital transactions on earth.<\/p>\n
And 99.2 per cent of the phones sold in India are now made in India, against 26 per cent in 2014-15. Electronics went from a marginal export category to one of the country’s largest. Defence exports went from Rs 686 crore to more than Rs 38,000 crore.<\/p>\n
There was barely an Indian semiconductor story worth telling; now twelve manufacturing projects have been approved, and commercial production has begun at three.<\/p>\n
“But where is the growth?”<\/p>\n
Here is what makes the refrain particularly odd right now. Much of the world has, for now, been reduced to a remarkably narrow economic story: AI, AI chips, AI data centres, AI capital expenditure. The same cluster of companies, the same investment cycle, the same trade, over and over.<\/p>\n
India’s story looks nothing like that. There is technology growth, but alongside it there is manufacturing, infrastructure, financial services, renewables, defence, electronics, aviation, rail, construction, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, digital commerce and semiconductors.<\/p>\n
The point is that there are so many of them. Much of the world is running on one engine. India has several.<\/p>\n
Growth looks like a semiconductor plant rising where there was an empty field, and another airport appearing on a map that used to be blank. It looks like a bank lending again because its balance sheet is no longer poisoned.<\/p>\n
It also looks like the welder on that freight corridor, and the girl holding the first MBBS seat her village has ever sent anyone to. Like the grandmother who no longer walks two kilometres before dawn for water. Like the small town that got an airport and discovered it was not small.<\/p>\n
That is growth. What else would it be?<\/p>\n
Nobody is claiming the work is finished. But the direction is no longer in doubt. The forecasters keep being surprised in the same direction: the Reserve Bank projected 7 per cent for the latest quarter, and the economy delivered 7.8. Give India one more decade like the last one, and today’s forecasts will look timid.<\/p>\n
One can argue about whether a particular quarter disappointed, whether a project was delayed, whether one sector is overhyped and another underperforming. But if GDP, investment, profits, credit, infrastructure, manufacturing, exports, and the emergence of entire new industries do not count as evidence of growth, then “Where is the growth?” is a question constructed so that no answer can satisfy it. That is why the refrain survives every answer, and why it deserves none.<\/p>\n
So, the next time it arrives, look at the tracks, the roads, the factories, and the companies that did not exist ten years ago.<\/p>\n
Where is the growth? Everywhere you are refusing to look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even as the freight lines open and the cranes swing over skylines that did not have them, conversations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101,78449,23396],"class_list":["post-834609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-india-gdp-growth","tag-indian-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}