DH Toon | Economic weakness in a growing economy

Despite becoming the fifth largest national economy in the world (leaving out the US state of California, whose GSDP is currently the fifth largest in the world and is all set to take the fourth position – just behind US, China and Japan -- from Germany, pushing the latter to the fifth), India continues to have the largest concentration of the world’s poor, estimated at 159.8 million to 192.8 million people in 2020 using the international poverty line of PPP $2.15 a day as per a World Bank report (PPP stands for purchasing power parity).

Rather than attacking reports and studies with adverse findings as the handiwork of anti-nationals and Urban Naxals, the government should note and address the growing poverty, inequality, agrarian distress, and unemployment about which even RSS General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale expressed concern recently. As rightly said, growth without equity is not sustainable. The Modi government appears to be waking up from its deep slumber, as seen from its recent Rozgar (Job) Mela promising 10 lakh jobs over the next one and a half years, although in 2014 he had promised two crore jobs per year.

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