Why Modi 3.0 needs a new economic blueprint

livemint.com:

₹10,000 he earns as an “errand boy" is just enough to keep his family going. Not surprisingly, the educated, underemployed young man is frustrated and angry. And he is not alone—a multitude of disgruntled youth across the country find themselves in a similar predicament.

Writing in Mint recently, Nitin Pai, co-founder of public policy think tank Takshashila Institution, said India needs to create 20 million jobs a year to gainfully employ its people. It is not that the Indian economy, which is growing at a rapid pace, is not creating jobs; the unemployment rate for people aged 15 years or above dipped to 3.1% in 2023 from 4.2% in 2021, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey’s data. But the economy doesn’t seem to be creating enough jobs in line with demand, according to some observers.

Did this issue cost the BJP its majority and force it to form a coalition government? It may well have. According to the World Inequality Lab, the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened during the last decade, through the two terms of the NDA government. The richest 1% of the population now owns 40% of the country’s wealth.

Worse, the bottom 50% own just 6.4% of the wealth. There are variations even among the middle classes. It is unusual to see car makers growing faster than two-wheeler makers in a developing country like India.

But that is what happened in the years following the pandemic, epitomizing the skewed, K-shaped consumption in key parts of the economy as inequality exploded. However, many experts are of the opinion that the NDA government’s economic management has delivered. Indeed, BJP leaders take pride in claiming that the growth in the last nine years has pulled 248 million people out of multi-dimensional