Modi And Markets: Arguments for Transformation

by Dhiraj Nayyar

In 2014, and in the subsequent assembly elections thereafter, including in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, that strategy came a cropper because the poor marginalised saw through what was clearly a vote-garnering plan by India’s oldest party, which had little or nothing to do with economic progress. Unfortunately, in the long term, that strategy can only succeed if significant number of Indians remain mired in poverty. Two decades of double-digit economic growth, which will happen only with market-oriented reform, could make the poor a very small minority, not enough to win elections. Rahul could begin talking to the prosperous. But those who have achieved success the hard way would have scant regard for someone who has claimed India’s party of freedom as his inheritance.