Leading the Aspiration Nation

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, conservative political columnist and psychiatrist, coined the phrase ‘Bush Derangement Syndrome’ in 2003 dur­ing the presidency of George W Bush. Krauthammer defined the syndrome as “acute onset of paranoia in otherwise nor­mal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency and the very existence of George W Bush.”

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi appears to be afflicted with a similar disorder. Choosing to gloss over facts at the altar of po­litical expediency, Gandhi rushed to agree with US President Donald Trump when the latter proclaimed that the Indian econ­omy was a “dead economy”. Trump’s remark came in response to India’s refusal to stop Russian oil purchases and halt what Peter Navarro dubbed “Modi’s war” in Ukraine. In July, hours after he announced a steep tariff on Indian goods, Trump declared, “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.” Trump’s attitude towards India had triggered criticism even within his country, with independent foreign policy analyst and adjunct professor at NYU, Edward Price, maintaining, “I used to think that President Donald Trump had a very poor understanding of economics and statecraft. And I realize now that that was wrong... in fact, Presi­dent Trump has no understanding of economics and statecraft.” But Rahul Gandhi, who projects himself as a standout rushed in where angels fear to tread, made this stunning remark: “The Indian economy is a dead economy and the entire world knows it, except the prime minister and the finance minister.”

When British economist JM Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead,” he was drawing attention to resolving the economic challenges of the present instead of wringing one’s hands over the distant future. But Keynes was clearly not on Gandhi’s mind. The “entire world” that he referred to could also be persistent critics of Modi’s policies and politics who have ranted for the last two-and-a-half decades and informed Gandhi’s worldview. This, irrespective of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which last week reiter­ated its position that India was a “key growth engine” of the global economy. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, speak­ing at the Milken Institute ahead of IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington, said, “Global growth patterns have been changing over the years, notably with China decelerating steadily while India develops into a key growth engine.”

The remarks came even as the Indian economy continued to demonstrate resilience and sustainable growth, driven by strong domestic consumption and investment and impacted only in a limited way by external shocks. With a GDP growth rate of 8.2 per cent for the fiscal year 2023-24, India is the fastest-growing econo­my in the world, beating China (5.2 per cent), the US (2.7 per cent), and the European Union (0.7 per cent). In Q1 of FY26, India’s real GDP growth stood at 7.8 per cent against the Rserve Bank of India’s (RBI) earlier projection of only 6.5 per cent, backed by a hike in con­sumption and cuts in Goods and Services (GST) rates. Nominal GDP increased by 115 per cent, from $2.04 trillion in 2014 to $4.30 trillion in 2025, overtaking the UK (2022) and Japan (2025) to rank as the fourth-largest economy globally. In PPP terms, India accounted for 9 per cent of the global GDP and has contributed 16.1 per cent to growth over the past decade.

These achievements came on the back of policy reforms such as GST (₹20.18 lakh crore collections in FY24) and PLI schemes (₹12.5 lakh crore production, eight lakh jobs). These are not details any reasonably intelligent economic mind could miss. During his recent first visit to New Delhi, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer echoed this global confidence in India’s growth that decisively countered Trump’s potshot. Underlining “India’s growth story is remarkable,” Starmer said, “India is aiming to be the world’s third largest economy by 2028 and… a completely developed country by 2047. Everything that I have seen since I have been here is ab­solute proof to me that you... [are] an economic superpower in the making.”

RAHUL GANDHI AND his team of Modi baiters, however, persist in painting the Indian economy in the colours of gloom and doom, insisting that the standard of living of ordinary citizens has nosedived from bad to worse, that household savings have plummeted as have disposable incomes, and that the purchasing power of the aam aadmi has shrunk significantly. Numbers tell a different story but, as British economist and author Ronald Coase put it, “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.” That, indeed, is what Rahul Gandhi and his purveyors of bleakness appear to be banking on.

The spurt in economic activity, especially sales of durable goods, picked up dramatically after the GST rate revisions kicked in. Data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Associations (FADA) shows this clearly. In September 2024, combined sales of all catego­ries of automobiles stood at 17.36 lakh units. In September 2025, these sales were marginally higher at 18.27 lakh units. But when one compares data for the Navratri period this year with that for 2024, automobiles sales were on fire. At Navratri 2024 (roughly the last week of September to the first two days of October), the num­ber of automobiles sold was 8.63 lakh units; this year on Navratri week, sales shot up to 11.56 lakh units. In fact, the vast bulk of the sales in September took place during the Navratri week. Not only is this period considered auspicious for purchases but this year, the reduction of GST rates turbocharged the sales.

This is just a single data point, reflecting an anticipated push to the economy that had been promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech. Increasing the growth rate of the Indian economy while maintaining economic stability has been a cornerstone of the Modi government’s approach to policymaking over the last decade. The strategies have varied. In the last year, the government has relied on reducing taxes to boost consumption. Apart from rationalising the GST rates, direct taxes were also rationalized in the Budget this year. Incomes up to ₹12 lakh were exempted from the ambit of taxation.

In the six years from 2020-21 to 2025-26, the strategy of growth was based on a booster shot of public investment to the Indian economy. In 2020-21, the Centre’s capital expenditure stood at 2.1 per cent of GDP. When grants-in-aid to states are added, this figure went up to 3.2 per cent of GDP. This figure rose to an all-time high of 4.3 per cent of GDP in 2025-26 (Budget estimates) even if the Centre’s capital expenditure has come down marginally to 3.1 per cent of GDP when compared to an all-time high of these years at 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2023-24.

These figures show that the focus on boosting consumption has not been at the cost of capital expenditures. The reasons for change in priorities are rational. For one, there is an upper limit to what the Centre can spend on. Railways, national highways, and other infrastructure have been built at a breakneck speed. That process continues. But beyond that, it is the states where the domain of in­vestment lies now. The problem at that level is political. The logic of democracy hits economic rationality very badly at that level. For reasons of political survival, all parties have indulged in reckless

 economic populism, leaving nothing for investment. The Centre has been forced to pick up the slack (and the tab) for investments.

For its part, the Centre has tried its best to incentivise states to ramp up capital expenditure. Grants-in-aid for creation of capital assets to states are now routinely at 1 per cent of GDP or even more in some years. But this fact, and its positive consequences for eco­nomic growth, is never appreciated by states and their leaders. The unseemly fight over the Centre appropriating cess and levies on taxes has a political reason: if those proceeds are shared with the states, they are received without any spending constraints being imposed on them. They are “politically pleasant” as they can be splurged for populist ends. Another reason for the Centre’s shifting spending priorities is the necessity of much higher spending on defence capital expenditure in the coming years given the deterio­rating global geopolitical conditions.

IN THESE “HIGH-LEVEL” calculations, India’s poor and un­derprivileged sections have not been forgotten. Senegalese dip­lomat and former head of FAO, Jacques Diouf, echoing Nelson Mandela, once said, “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” That has been the bedrock sentiment of the Modi government’s welfare policies. The PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) was launched when the Covid-19 pan­demic struck India in March 2020. It remains functional even today and its expenditure has been budgeted until December this year. The scheme provides free rations to 80 crore people and has cost ₹11.80 lakh crore in these years. Since 2014, the emphasis on welfare has paid off. Nearly 302 million people were lifted out of poverty when assuming equal sharing of resources within households be­tween 2011-12 and 2022-23. Research by Shamika Ravi, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), and Mudit Kapoor has shown that when assuming equal distribu­tion of household resources, national poverty rates decreased from 29.5 per cent in 2011-12 to 4 per cent in 2022-23. However, when accounting for unequal sharing, the poverty rate in 2011-12 was higher at 34.7 per cent, which fell to 10.5 per cent in 2023-24.

A significant achievement over the last decade has been that ex­treme poverty in India has come down from 27.1 per cent in 2011-12 (344.47 million) to 5.3 per cent in 2022-23 (75.24 million), according to the World Bank, proving to be a statistical outlier in a positive direction compared to other regions of the world. This is so despite the World Bank raising the poverty threshold from $2.15/person/ day to $3 currently. For this remarkable achievement, the govern­ment banked heavily on both technology and inclusive growth measures, thus noticeably minimising income inequality. Mul­tidimensional poverty levels, too, have come down significantly.

Among the most powerful weapons in the war against poverty is the use of technology. Leakage in the economy has been signifi­cantly minimised with the adoption of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) which slashed the quantum of pilferage in multiple schemes across the board by $40 billion in the eight years prior to 2024. The extensive use of DBT by over 51 ministries and departments in the Union government has led to the cumulative transfer through DBT-linked government schemes of over $450 billion during this period. The Aadhaar-linked DBT was launched in 2013 and the Aadhaar-driven approach has not only empowered citizens but also gener­ated significant savings for the government by purging databases of millions of fake, non-existent, and ineligible beneficiaries across various ministries. This led to the removal of over 4.15 crore fake LPG connections and 5.03 crore duplicate ration cards, thus stream­lining the distribution of essential services, such as cooking gas and food subsidies. Crucially, it allowed the government to ensure money in the hands of those who spend it rather than those who hoard their earnings or resort to unproductive investments.

Welfare has remained the focus of the Modi government’s policymaking but never at the cost of growth. In the years of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), welfare was the focus, but it was assumed that growth would “continue on its own”. That is never the case in any country. Any government that takes its eyes off growth soon finds itself in economic trouble. This has not hap­pened in India. Today, a series of trade and economic agreements with partners like the UAE, Australia and the UK has given India the breathing room that the US sought to deny.

The signs of economic growth and prosperity are not just evi­dent in urban India. Significant cash incentives have been given to special groups, including the education of girl children; funding for entrepreneurial ventures by women and SHGs; hiking agricultural produce MSP, and controlling the spiralling price of fertilisers and other farm inputs. Despite the Ukraine war impacting the last, this has meant that the rural economy has picked up noticeably and is reflected in the purchases of tractors, two wheelers, etc. These targeted measures have succeeded in controlling inflation, en­gendered by an overall positivity born of political stability and an accompanying confidence, removing unpredictability and allow­ing for longer-term planning. The sense of safety that comes from the management of borders and effective tackling of terror threats has added to socio-economic confidence. Except for perennial trouble-prone areas, the communal situation is well under control. The toll that communal disturbances take on the economy is well documented. The past 11 years have been relatively trouble-free. There is widespread confidence that the country is in the hands of a leader who enjoys public trust and is leading it in the right direction.

KEY INDICATORS ON infrastructure building and employment show a clear positive sentiment and trend. This year’s India Skills Report maintains that the evolving workforce requirements in technology, healthcare, fintech, renewable energy, and e-commerce are re­shaping employment landscapes not just in India but across vari­ous international regions, including Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa. These sectors are driving a noticeable surge in specialised job roles, reflecting the global shift towards innovation, green technologies, and digital economies.

India is currently also experiencing a significant infrastruc­ture boom, with investments exceeding $125 billion and numer­ous mega projects (Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, Navi Mumbai International Airport, Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train Project, etc) that are transforming the economic landscape and aim to en­hance connectivity, reduce travel times, and stimulate economic growth. Numerous other ambitious mega projects are also trans­forming the economic landscape, improving logistics, connect­ing urban and rural landscapes and economic activity pan-India, driven by government spending and private sector participation. The Union Budget for FY25 allocated a record ₹11.11 lakh crore for capital expenditure, marking a 16 per cent increase from the previous year. The government aims to mobilise ₹100 lakh crore in investments by 2027, targeting various sectors, including transportation, energy, and social infrastructure for sustained economic growth and citizen comfort.

Nor have Rahul Gandhi’s personal wealth and investments remained impervious to the confidence evident in the economy. His assets are currently worth over ₹20 crore, based on a diverse in­vestment portfolio that spans stocks and mutual funds. The affida­vit submitted to the Election Commission of India (ECI) revealed that out of the total investments, he holds movable assets valued at ₹9,24,59,264, with approximately 90 per cent (₹8,16,94,091) in­vested in mutual funds and stocks. The irony is that the Congress leader’s investment journey began in 2014, in tandem with Modi’s ascendance to prime ministership. At the time, it was a modest ₹81.28 lakh portfolio. Starting with mutual funds, he moved to more favoured equity-oriented schemes, reflecting a cautious approach typical of a novice investor. He primarily invested in large-cap equity funds, following the power of compounding through systematic investment plans (SIPs). HDFC Equity Fund, SBI Bluechip Fund, ICICI Prudential Bluechip Fund, all featured here. By 2017, his MF holding went up to ₹2.5 crore. He then diver­sified to direct stock investments, with chosen stocks, including Bajaj Finance, Asian Paints, and Infosys. His top holding was Pidilite Industries, showing his confidence in consumer-centric business. By 2024, his portfolio had boomed to an estimated ₹8.16 crore.

Afflicted by a Modi derangement syndrome and heavily de­pendent on advisers not-so-well-versed in politics and economics, however, Gandhi continues with his doomsday predictions and the wealth-shaming of Indian entrepreneurs who are creating world-class infrastructure and employment for the country. In fact, wealth-shaming, also known as status-shaming, class-shaming or success-shaming, forms the fulcrum of Gandhi’s politically ex­pedient worldview. Unwilling to acknowledge a new era where ordinary Indians are increasingly aspirational, ambitious and shim­mying up the socio-economic ladder with relative ease, the Con­gress leader seems fixated on yesteryear’s tropes. That is, the likes of Shakespeare’s Shylock, Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, Lex Luthor, and Robin Hood, who famously robbed the rich to feed the poor. Ingraining wealth-shaming in society paves the road to stunted ambitions and aspirations, clipped success and stymied hope in a better tomorrow. It deepens discord and discontent in society. But Gandhi’s staple diet of a stale economic vision appears mired in the insecurity and low self-esteem of past decades, when literature, cinema and popular media widely churned out stereotypes of a blood-sucking rich, exploiting and oppressing the poor. Today, not only have the numbers of those abjectly poor drastically declined, but the per capita income of Indians is around $2,700 for a popula­tion of 1.4 billion, with about one-third considered middle-class.

In the US, for a long period, the campaign trope was spun around ‘Are you better off today than you were before?’ The American Dream had been defined as “the belief that every citizen in the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve suc­cess and prosperity through hard work, determination, and ini­tiative.” It is a vision that reflects the ideals of freedom, equality, and individual agency. From George Washington to Steve Jobs, American history is filled with stories of individuals who rose from humble beginnings to achieve greatness. These stories exemplify the Dream’s promise: that anyone, regardless of background, can succeed. Over time, Americans have split on the meaning of the American Dream, with immigrants and blacks pegging it more on opportunity while other groups name stability as the key fac­tor. The younger generation has also reshaped the very definition compared to older generations that believed in the owned subur­ban home, picket fence, steady employment and retirement securi­ty. The new generation, despite all the financial challenges of today or because of it, has redefined the meaning of success while relying on the hustle culture and passion-driven work, entrepreneurship and diversified income streams to widen the cultural outlines of its American Dream. The latest survey on this subject confirmed that despite all the challenges, youth still believed in the American Dream and that it could be achieved.

There is no equivalent like the Indian Dream. But once you factor in the truism that satisfaction about one’s standard and quality of life is a static trajectory in an aspirational society with wide access to the internet and social media, especially in a society dominated by youth, the prevailing sense of hope and confidence in the Indian economy is undeniable. The sense of optimism has outdone what prevailed in the post-liberalisation years. Although it was the Congress government of PV Narasimha Rao, with Manmohan Singh as finance minister, that took the tough deci­sion of ringing in economic liberalisation, the overall mindset in the regime continued to be one of a period of scarcity and the licence raj years, stunting entrepreneurship, innovation and pas­sion, playing favourites among industrialists and suppressing the animal spirits in key growth sectors. That created conditions for the government to play the roles of both patronage dispenser and agitator. It led to a unique situation where the purported problem solver was the biggest contributor to the problem.

EVEN IN THE dual (and schizophrenic) role of agitator-benefactor, Congress was plagued by failure because of a lack of imagination. Unlike the Modi government, which perceived welfare not as charity but as a funda­mental right of the underprivileged, Congress could only come up with MGNREGA as a flagship employment scheme for the poor. The scheme was aimed at poverty alleviation and not a solu­tion to elevating one out of poverty. In itself, it was an extension of the 1978 employment scheme of Maharashtra, not an original vision or programme. Here, too, they remained fixated on pov­erty, although the Indian middle class has long moved out of the roti, kapda aur makaan era and the consumption patterns of the middle class have shifted from basic necessities to services like healthcare and education.

The middle class is expanding rapidly, projected to reach 60 per cent of the population by 2047, driving economic growth and potentially transforming India into a consumption powerhouse, fuelled by increasing disposable incomes and an aspirational drive. There are other positive indicators of the ongoing trans­formation among the middle class in non-metro and second and third tier townships. Smaller cities are driving India’s economic surge. Sample this: Airports Authority of India (AAI) data shows that Kanpur airport handled just 197 passengers in 2015-16 and Mysore only 1,190. By 2024-25 those figures had risen to 3,22,252 and 94,891, respectively. This clearly overturns the arguments of Gandhi and his friends, since empirical data points to more disposable incomes percolating down to the hinterland than ever before in modern India’s history.

The Congress leadership is still stuck in the Garibi Hatao era, re­fusing to acknowledge the current transformation. That has meant that even when conditions do not prevail, they continue to purvey the politics of misery mongering and deprivation. True, income inequality persists as does the gap in wealth, but they would like to convince people that there is all-pervasive misery and deprivation. But a changing, expanding middle class has meant that more and more of the erstwhile underprivileged groups are being included inits widening ambit. Gandhi seems wilfully oblivious to this. According to the third edition of Home Credit India’s survey, The Great Indian Wallet 2025, India’s lower middle-class households are confident of achieving their key financial goals within the next five years. Nearly 73 per cent of the respondents showed optimism in the company’s Financial Well-Being Index. The “future expecta­tions” score of this index remains strong at 59, indicating that rising prices have not shaken consumers’ long-term confidence and a positive sentiment, thanks partially to rising household incomes. Fifty seven per cent of respondents said their household earned more, up from 52 per cent in 2024.

As long as lived experience and anecdotal evidence inform those from the ranks of the lower middle class, they will continue to be­lieve that it is possible, with the right opportunities in the current economic climate, to achieve the new definition of success. From that belief stem aspirational urges. Unlike in earlier decades, the nosedive in multi-dimensional poverty numbers, accompanied by the accomplishments of people from one’s own ranks, has ampli­fied both hope and confidence, leading to changing demands from essentials to quality services, and so on.

Traditional Marxists talk about objective and subjective con­ditions. Rahul Gandhi has been working hard, alongside foreign think-tanks and self-styled intellectuals at home, in investing heav­ily in the poverty of India and in painting the colonial trope of a nation of snake charmers and rope tricks. One has to give credit to their effort, but for it to succeed and find serious buyers among the voting population, what is required is an all-pervasive condition of deep despair. And that is not there in the India of today.