Economy plays role in election

INDIA’S finance minister yesterday said fast economic growth and rapid urbanisation would slash the number of people in extreme poverty by 2021, and end it completely in the decade after that.

More than 21% of India’s 1.3 billion people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2011, when the last census was taken, according to the World Bank.

The economy is a major issue in a staggered general election that began on Thursday and will end on May 19, with the main opposition Congress party rejecting a rosy picture Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been presenting.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who heads the BJP’s publicity department in the election, said the number of people who live in poverty would drop to below 15% in the next three years and to a negligible level in the 10 years after that.

“Urbanisation will increase, the size of the middle-class will grow and the economy will expand manifolds,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

“These will add to the number of jobs and, as the experience of the past three decades have shown, every section of citizens will benefit.”

But the Congress has taken issue with such assertions, in particular, pointing to leaked government data that showed unemployment rose to its highest level in 45 years in 2017/18.

Jaitley said economic problems could be addressed as India remained the world’s fastest growing major economy. | Reuters