Economy: Without PM Modi’s vision, India won’t be the third-largest economy, says Nirmala
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said India emerging as the third-largest world economy is not an “arithmetic inevitability” but requires sound efforts and a visionary leader like Prime Minister Narendra Modi to accomplish it.
Commenting on Former FM P. Chidambaram’s recent claim that India would, anyway, become the third-largest economy irrespective of who the PM is, she said “Nothing grows automatically. It is the effort that makes it grow… There is a guarantee being given by Prime Minister Modi that, with good governance and clean administration, he will ensure that India would reach the third rank. So, it is not an arithmetic inevitability.”
Dubbing the ten years of UPA tenure (2004-14) as India’s lost decade because of bad policies and rampant corruption, she said growth in GDP does not happen automatically but requires a lot of effort at both the macro and the micro level. “Unless the GDP grows, you won’t be able to meet the demands of the economy.”
In a media report, Chidambaram was quoted as having said India would become the third-largest economy given the size of its population and there was “no magic” in it.
Referring to comments by “a former finance minister”, Sitharaman said, “No magic is involved is what he said. Then why was there the roller coaster ride? No magic is involved and given our population will anyway grow inevitably, then why did we dip and rise and dip and rise?”
She said that India’s position in the world improved by two ranks from 12th place in 2004 to 10th rank in 2014.
“We notched just two points up in 10 years after Prime Minister Vajpayee left. From the 10th rank thereafter, we have now reached the fifth rank in 10 years and within two more, probably, it will go up to the third rank.”
India’s GDP is currently ranked fifth, after the US, China, Germany, and Japan.
Speaking at the Viksit Bharat Ambassador Campus Dialogue at Gitam University in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, Sitharaman compared the two crises faced by the UPA and NDA administrations over the decade. Unlike the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the global financial crisis in 2008-09 was not felt across the globe.
“Despite COVID, we were able to reach the fifth place. Only a visionary PM, who will make sure that corruption doesn’t eat into the goodwill and the earnings of the common people, could have done it,” Sitharaman added.
