DNA Edit | Middle Class Blues: PM Modi needs to apply a ‘balm’ quickly

In 2014, the people of India, with a unanimity that has rarely been seen, put Narendra Modi on the Prime Minister’s seat. His promise of progress and prosperity cut through the opacity and corruption that had become the norm under the UPA II administration. Citizens were yearning for a change and it was PM Modi’s promise of robust and inclusive growth that appealed to them.

However, in the three years since 2014, millions of faceless middle-class Indians are still waiting for many of those promises to turn true. To be fair, the government has instituted and successfully put a number of poverty-targeting schemes and policies on their feet. The Jan Dhan Yojana has transformed the banking accessibility milieu in India by ensuring that every Indian citizen has a bank account, and is consequently connected to the government’s larger blueprint of progress sans any middleman or bureaucrat. Via a myriad social programmes, the government has helped improve the station in life of its poor people. However, those who are just a step above the poor classes have come in for a rude surprise.

While a high rate of inflation is eating into their incomes, the prospects of jobs on the informal economy front seems to be worsening by the day. Additionally, teething problems that have come in the wake of BJP’s groundbreaking tax reform, GST, are not easing up anytime soon. Yes, some revisions in rates and rules have been put in place, but it will still be long before these changes create the positive outcomes that the government is hoping for. What’s adding to the misery is a series of surveys conducted by the Reserve Bank of India, a harbinger of the dark times that lie ahead. The central bank released the results of a survey conducted on consumer confidence on October 4, once it had released its bimonthly monetary policy.

The survey gives no cause for cheer. Out of those surveyed, 40.7 per cent of the respondents said that the condition of the economy had considerably worsened in September 2017 vis-à-vis just 25.3 per cent in September last year. On the other hand, in September last year, 66.3 per cent of the people surveyed believed that the state of the economy will improve while this September that figure was down to 50.8 per cent. On the employment front, the news isn’t any chirpier. In the second half of 2016, 31.4 per cent of the respondents believed that the employment scenario had worsened as against 43.7 per cent who subscribed to this belief in September this year.

This situation on the job front has been compounded, in parts, due to the disruptive effect of demonetisation and GST, and, in part, due to the inclement global macroeconomic winds. On the horizon, there are some green shoots in the Indian economy and the BJP government must do all in its power to foster these pockets. Further, the government must not just change the narrative on the economy, but also usher in fundamental changes that address the slowdown in the economy.