'71% Indians expect first year of Modi govt to boost economy'

Most Indians expect their personal happiness will improve over the next five years, posing a concrete benchmark against which to measure the future success of Modi govt

All politics may be local, but in a global society national economies and the well-being of a country’s citizens are increasingly benchmarked against their peers around the world.

As the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi finishes its first half year in office, its accomplishments will first and foremost be judged in comparison to the record of its predecessor, the administration of Manmohan Singh.

But Indians are also members of an international community. They have opinions about the health of their nation’s economy, its prospects, the state of their lives and the future for both themselves and the next generation. How those assessments stack up against judgements made by people in other comparable economies — by Bangladeshis, Brazilians, Chinese and Indonesians about their own lives — may be the second yardstick history will ultimately use to assess the Modi government’s record.

As Modi took office, a Pew Research Center survey showed that Indians (64 per cent) were more likely to think well of their nation’s economy than were people in other emerging markets (median of 39 per cent good) or developing economies (51 per cent).

Nevertheless, Indians were significantly less happy with their national economic situation than were the Chinese (89 per cent). To the extent that Modi and many in the Indian business community want to emulate China’s success, the Indian people say there is a long way to go.

Modi was elected on the crest of a wave of public economic optimism. Roughly seven-in-10 Indians (71 per cent) expected their country’s economic situation to improve during Modi’s first year in office. Such optimism dwarfed that in other emerging markets (48 per cent) and developing nations (57 per cent). Specifically, it exceeded that in Brazil (63 per cent) and Indonesia (55 per cent). But, again, it trailed that in China (80 per cent).

In addition, two-thirds (67 per cent) of the public anticipated that the current generation of Indian children would be better off financially than their parents. While this exceeded the generational expectations of others in emerging (49 per cent) and developing (51 per cent) societies, it notably lagged that in China (85 per cent) and ran slightly behind in Brazil (72 per cent) and even Bangladesh (71 per cent).

At an individual level, on both absolute and relative terms, Indians are less sure of their personal well-being. On a ladder of life satisfaction, a standard polling measurement where 10 represents the best possible life and 0 represents the worst possible life, only 44 per cent of Indians placed themselves somewhere between step seven and 10. Such life satisfaction is less than the median in other emerging markets and significantly behind that in Brazil (73 per cent), China (59 per cent) and Indonesia (58 per cent).

Nevertheless, 64 per cent of Indians expect their personal happiness will improve over the next five years, posing a concrete benchmark against which to measure the future success of the Modi government. Specifically, to realise their ambitions to get ahead, Indians put a priority on a good education (60 per cent), the importance of which to average Indians dwarfs the value of knowing the right people (26 per cent) or belonging to a wealthy family (24 per cent). Notably, the priority Indians give to education as the means to a better life far exceeds the importance accorded schooling by the Chinese (27 per cent). This all suggests that Modi’s success may be closely tied to his ability to improve educational opportunities for all Indians.

Finally, Indians are particularly worried about inequality: 70 per cent say the gap between the rich and the poor is a very big national problem. Such concern far exceeds that in China (42 per cent) and even in Bangladesh (34 per cent). Modi’s success in narrowing  that gap may prove yet another yardstick by which he is eventually measured both domestically and internationally.

Clearly, Indians have high national expectations for the Modi tenure. They will largely judge his success compared with their lives before he took office. But Indians are no longer isolated from the rest of the world. Many increasingly know of China’s success and of advances in the standard of living in other emerging markets.

The Modi government has and will use such comparisons to goad economic reforms in India. But benchmarks work both ways. And if the public’s sense of its own well-being and that of the nation does not improve in both absolute and relative terms, the Modi government may eventually be called to account.

Bruce Stokes is director of global economic attitudes at the Pew Research Center