#203 Economic Growth and Voter Preferences

<p><strong>India Policy Watch #1: Why We Don’t Care About Growth</strong></p><p><em>Insights on burning policy issues in India</em></p><p><em>— RSJ</em></p><p>Earlier this week, Pranay and I recorded an episode with Shruti Rajagopalan for her podcast <em>Ideas of India</em>. I have been following Shruti’s columns and the podcast for a while now, and I will recommend you subscribe to both her podcast and her newsletter. She’s always insightful, curious and uses first principles to probe issues. This means you cannot get away with the usual stock answers. One of the questions we discussed at length was why does the Indian electorate not prioritise growth while making their choices at polls. It is an interesting contention whose premise itself can be questioned. How can we conclude that they don’t? And then, if we assume for a moment they don’t, why do they not? </p><p>I won’t spoil your experience of listening to the episode by going into the details of what we discussed. But I will cover some ground in today’s edition on why it seems that people in India don’t care about economic growth. And as it often happens in life, this discussion happened in the same week when India published its GDP estimates for the quarter Oct-Dec, 2022. So what I will do today is cover the data released by the National Statistical Office (NSO), take a wider view of what’s happening with the economy and round it off with that question that Shruti asked.</p><p>Here’s the headline news on growth: From <a target="_blank" href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/growth-likely-to-touch-6-5-7-over-medium-term-cea/articleshow/98372010.cms">the ET</a>:</p><p>“India’s gross domestic product (GDP) for the October-December quarter moderated to 4.4 per cent from 6.3 per cent in the previous quarter, data shared by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation showed on Tuesday. The GDP has now moderated from 13.5 per cent in the first quarter of FY23 largely due to pandemic-related statistical distortions.</p><p>Lower