The issue is not about India’s GDP, but its JDP RADHE RADHE

 Participating in the debate on the motion of no-confidence in Parliament last week, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman waxed eloquent about India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing in double digits, the Indian economy being the world’s fastest, and also highlighted glowing reports by foreign institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Morgan Stanley. Former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram countered Ms. Sitharaman by pointing out that annual GDP growth under the United Progressive Alliance was higher. Economist-politician Subramanian Swamy too has weighed in about India’s abysmal economic performance by giving suggestions, largely outlandish, to improve GDP growth. The whole debate among India’s leading economic policymakers has revolved around whose GDP growth was higher (i.e. the National Democratic Alliance or the UPA), or what must be done to achieve higher growth. But no one has really asked the question, whose GDP growth is it in the first place?

If India’s economy is growing so rapidly, then why is the demand for minimum wage work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme also growing so fast? After all, only those who have absolutely no alternative sources of income will ask to toil in the sun the whole day for bare minimum wages. Ever since the Narendra Modi government took office, India’s real GDP has grown 5.3% (annualised), but demand for MGNREGA work also grew at 5.4% every year. That is, when India was apparently the fastest growing economy in the world, more and more people were also clamouring for MGNREGA work. If the economy is doing well, it should be creating many jobs, which should then lower the demand for minimum wage MGNREGA work. MGNREGA demand should be inversely proportional to economic growth.