India’s GDP contracted nearly 24% in the April-June quarter of 2020 (compared with the same quarter in 2019). While this is the outside edge of most estimates, it is likely to be an underestimate, as unorganised sector data is not fully accounted for. Furthermore future revisions will likely be downwards as data from a larger …
Continue reading Did the lockdown lead to the GDP shocker? Not quite.
In his 14 April 2020 announcement of the extension of India’s lockdown, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that his government had been proactive in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. https://youtu.be/F07fXd4vVlg?t=317 He made four claims (listen from 5:19): “When we didn’t have even one case of coronavirus, India had started airport screening of passengers arriving …
Despite the frenzy of distractions since, by now you have likely heard the news that demonetisation failed. As NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain put it in Truth vs Hype, the news sent the government into “a spiral of deflection, of moving goalposts and of swamping us with cherry-picked data”. He's being very polite, avoiding the accurate and …
In a Forbes magazine article that caused a happy stir in right-wing social media, Harry G. Broadman argued that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “governing prowess” had “boosted India’s GDP growth” and “produced sizeable increases of inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI)”. He stated that the reforms implemented by Modi in his first three years were …
An Economic Times (ET) report on 26 Apr credited the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) for a dramatic turnaround in the state’s electricity situation. The news report claimed that UP had “shed blackouts within a month of the BJP taking over the reins, moving from perennially running short of electricity …
Continue reading Spinning an electricity turnaround in Uttar Pradesh
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is proud of the government’s scheme to distribute millions of low-cost, energy efficient LED bulbs. And why not: Modi told the Lok Sabha on 7 Feb that the distribution of 21 crore LED bulbs had helped households save ₹11,000 crore in electricity bills. Even the name bears his unmistakable imprint: “Unnat …
Continue reading Why you shouldn’t be bedazzled by Modi’s LED claims
In case you’re wondering where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promised “Acche Din” went, the answer is getting clearer. As part of the Uttar Pradesh campaign, BJP-affiliated social media has been spreading clips of a 16 Sep TV appearance by party president Amit Shah, where he directly answers this question. So let’s examine the six claims that Shah, …
It's hard to tell whether demonetisation will turn out to be a bold hit or a costly miss, but it appears to many that the government has taken the black money bull by the horns. Announcing the withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi listed several steps that his government had taken …
A look at India's rapid rise in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index, first published as an oped in the Hindustan Times: It’s clear that the Modi government can’t get enough of comparative rankings and indicators. And this is understandable: despite a solid reform push and favourable (if controversial) official statistics, many feel that …
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Times Now, his first TV interview since taking office, on 27 Jun 2016. As with his Wall Street Journal interview the month before (critiqued here), Modi covered a lot of ground, from economic reform to domestic politics to foreign policy. Here we specifically examine some of his claims regarding his …
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