Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign trips have consistently made headlines in the last one year. His visit to America was widely reported and analysed in India and abroad. While the Prime Minister may have received a rockstar reception in the US then, unfortunately for him, a year on the reviews for his government are not so flattering.
Analysing Modi’s first year in power, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted that “messy realities are sinking in”.
The WSJ is among the many American media agencies that have been critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first year in government.
Even Modi government’s “Make in India” aimed at supercharging the manufacturing growth, “is so far mostly hype”, added the WSJ piece.
One of the reports cited economic parameters like exports to say that the “economy is merely limping along”.
Inflation-adjusted lending for capital investment last year fell to a level not seen since 2004. Exports are down for the fifth straight month in April, corporate earnings are dismal and foreign institutional investors have pulled around USD 2 billion out of Indian stocks and bonds in May so far.
The New York Times wasn’t very forgiving either. An analytical piece in the newspaper argued that Modi must face the reality that much of his agenda is “still only potential.”
From abroad, India is now seen as a bright spot, expected to pass China this year to become the world’s fastest-growing large economy. But at home, job growth remains sluggish. Businesses are in wait-and-see mode. And Modi has political vulnerabilities, as parliamentary opposition leaders block two of his central reform initiatives and brand him ‘anti-poor’ and ‘anti-farmer’.
–The New York Times article titled ‘After a Year of Outsize Expectations, Modi Adjusts His Political Course for India’
The article further added that “most formidable of all is a problem Modi has made for himself: outsize expectations that he would sweep away constraints to growth in India, like stringent laws governing labour and land acquisition.”
(With inputs from PTI)
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