UPA’s dream of India Shining: A reality or a myth.

UPA’s dream of India Shining: A reality or a myth.

It is year 2014 and the time is here when the fate of India will be decided by the local masses. 15th Lok Sabha is over and now everyone have their eyes on the upcoming general elections. Before people actually go and cast their votes they are busy analyzing the good and bad of Gandhi-Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. What are your views? How much UPA has succeeded in its efforts in making India Shining?

Reality

1. The success of any economy can be measured by its economic growth and UPA has managed to give an economic growth of above 7.5 % in its tenure. If you go by statistics it is the fastest in any decade in India's history and it will take real efforts to beat these numbers in the coming decades.

2. The important point to note here is that India managed to get an annual average GDP growth number of 7.44% during the five year period which came after the financial crisis of 2008-09.

3. A GDP growth which stood well above 7% mark resulted in highest decadal increase in average income in India’s history. AS per capita national income, the average income increased by nearly 75 per cent in real, inflation-adjusted rupees.

4. The 10 years period witnessed the steepest decline in the poverty ratio from 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 22 per cent in 2011-12.

5. Major fiscal consolidation achieved between 2004-05 and 2007-08. Even during the economic crisis after 2008 India was the second-fastest growing among all economies that are at least one-eighth of India's in size.

6. The gap between India's and China's growth rates has significantly reduced during these years.

Myth

1. Most of the high growth occurred in the first seven years up to 2010-11 which was led by the global economic boom of 2002-2007.

2. In the last two years that is, 2012-13 and 2013-14, official estimates show the miserable GDP growth numbers below five per cent.

3. The CPI inflation has remained high (nine to 11 per cent a year) in the last five years. The period also witnessed a steep rise in food inflation and the reason were the large increases in food procurement prices and a failing public distribution system.

4. The poor economic policies led to the higher foreign trade and current account deficits. Rupee depreciated to the highest levels in the year 2011 and 2013.

5. Poor economic reforms like pre-election ramping up of major subsidies including oil and fertilizer, ill-conceived and inefficiently run entitlement programmes, government pay and other sops are part of UPA’s economic legacy.. Public education and health sectors have to suffer from these entitlement programmes.

6. The jobs were not there for the young new entrants which made them to enter in the labour force to earn their living.

7. The biggest flaw is the "crony-capitalist" policies in key sectors such as telecom mining and land allocation. The economy is till fighting with the aftermaths of 2G spectrum allocation scam.

Conclusion

Seeing the good and bad of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, one can easily see that the government started well and had a good opportunity to strengthen India's long-term development potential offered by the years of high growth and investment but as the time passed the results did not remain that impressive.