Recession and resilient India

A lot is being said to rationalise argument against falling rupee and hyperinflation. It’s being argued that India is doing marvellously better than other economies which are reeling under onslaught of inflation and are receding towards recession if not already into it. India is resilient and recession has not touched it. Argument is of course also double edged honed to shower praise on current leadership which is, as they assume, making India stand stronger and differently abled. 

It’s flawed argument. The present financial status of the country is weak as reflected not just from falling value of rupee, but flight of foreign investment out of the country. Later can be checked from daily statistics one observes on stock market public data available everyday . This is going to become harsher after FED raised interests. Our reserves would continue to fall. 

The cost of routine consumption for commoners has skyrocketed already for past two three years. The cost of living is expansive even for those who get handsome salaries. The poor who could barely afford one meal are suffering because of nutritional deficit as healthy food becomes out of bound. The unemployment is at all time high and increasing with million odd aspirants joining this number every year. With current economic downturn, overall wealth of the country to support wholesome universal livelihood has severely weakened. 

Now coming back to our supposedly resilient economy vis a vis other nations particularly western nations, it is only to wishfully pat oneself for seeking political dividend with amplified narrative about quality of leadership which is making it happen. Let’s face it if global recession is around the corner we would be hit worse than many others. 

Forget about some individuals becoming superrich or size of economy becoming larger. These are nothing but  billboarding from data derived from macro and bulk measurements. These don’t include and  count status of 80 percent of poor and middle income citizens.  The narrative of great resilience falls flat knowing the we are already at lower end of developmental change which reaches a commoner. Comparatively a commoner  from say UK or US who is already at significant level higher in living standards vis a vis a similar denominator commoner from India, would be much less  impacted by recession.  Though statistically in terms of fall in growth parameters it could be larger fall for a westerner than for an Indian who would be actually hit severely by the recession but if only numbers proportionate to this fall are displayed, India would appear to be less impacted. Though that’s the fallacy. It is like value of percentage fall for a large unit is much bigger  than value of same percent fall for a smaller unit.