Our 5 trillion-dollar economy

Jug Suraiya

1st Indian: Previous sarkars used to talk about Garibi hatao, but this sarkar is talking about Amiri lao, which is an altogether different ball game. And it wants to make us into a five trillion dollar economy. 

2nd Indian: That’s great news!  But what exactly is a trillion?  It is like that thing with three wheels and pedals that kids ride on before they graduate to bicycles?

1st Indian: Don’t be such a budhu.  A trillion’s got nothing to do with pedals and wheels. It’s something that people called economists talk about and it involves a whole lot of zeroes, I’m not quite sure exactly how many, but I know it’s a lot.

2nd Indian: Wow.  That sounds terrific.  Do you think we’ll manage to become a five trillion dollar economy?

1st Indian: Well, we’re already pretty close to it.

2nd Indian: We are?  That’s wonderful.  But how do you figure out that we’re already close to being a five trillion dollar economy?

1st Indian: It’s a question of simple arithmetic.  First, take the country’s fiscal deficit.

2nd Indian: Physical deficit?  You mean we’re all deficient physically? Even though we were the ones who invented yoga all those ages ago?  How come we’re still physically deficient?

1st Indian: uff, oh. Not physical deficit, fiscal deficit.  Which is another thing economists talk about, and which means the difference, or deficit, between how much the sarkar spends and how much it earns, by way of taxes and other forms of revenue. And right now the sarkar has spent some 3.66 trillion more than it has earned, though that’s in rupees, not dollars.

2nd Indian: Talk about the last of the big time spenders. Our sarkar takes the cake.

1st Indian: Not only the cake, it also takes the gulab jamun and the jalebi when it comes to spending.  Then there are the NPAs, or Non-performing Assets of our banks, which are loans that the banks have made and which they can’t recover.  Right now just six of our banks have totted up NPAs worth Rs 400,000 crore.

2nd Indian: It seems our banks are just as spendthrift as our sarkar. So how do all these banks keep functioning with all these Non-performing Assets?  Where do they get the money from if they can’t raise it themselves?

1st Indian: Why, they get it from the sarkar, of course. Where else?

2nd Indian: But with it already spending 3.66 trillion more than it earns, where does the sarkar get the extra money from?

1st Indian: It gets it from the World Bank, to which India owes 104 billion dollars, and counting.  India’s total external borrowings averaged 272247.79 billion dollars from 1999 to 2018.

2nd Indian: You know what? I don’t think the sarkar needs to make a future projection of us becoming a five trillion dollar economy. I think we already are a five trillion dollar economy — five trillion dollars in debt that is…