The Political Fix: Maharashtra, disturbing GDP numbers (and a new Scroll section)
Welcome to the Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a weekly newsletter to help guide you through India’s complex political landscape.
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Dear reader,
The Political Fix takes a break this week, but we'll be back next week with plenty to cover. In the meantime, just a quick update:
Maharashtra saw the wheel turn multiple times, but finally end with the Bharatiya Janata Party sitting on the outside and the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress alliance in charge. But how long will it last? Read my takeaways.
Also, take a look at Shoaib Daniyal's broader piece about the state of BJP dominance in the current political age.
Meanwhile, double-digit growth was once the promise offered to us by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
This week, we found out that India's Gross Domestic Product growth in the July-September quarter has fallen to 4.5%, the slowest in more than six years.The chart actually conveys this the clearest, showing six consecutive quarters of declining growth. Anyone who is still arguing that this economic slowdown is "cyclical" is pulling wool over their eyes – never mind ministers in the Modi government still insisting that all is fine.
We took a bit of a break in the Hard Times series – our effort to cut through the propaganda and give you simple insights into the state of the Indian economy – over the past week, to do some more reporting and cover a few other important matters, like the mess in Maharashtra and the slow-burning protest in Kashmir.
But with the numbers looking more dire than ever before and Home Minister Amit Shah still saying India will become a $5 trillion economy by 2024 (a task that would involve growing at 15%!) we intend to get back to the Hard Times series in coming weeks with more clear-eyed looks at the Great Indian Slowdown. If you've missed any of the pieces before this, you can read them all here.
And while you wait for the next few pieces, do check out this piece that turns that disturbing graph above into a little bit of humour, even if it comes from the gallows.