From India Shining to...India Whining?

October 10, 2012, 5:56 am

By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh railed Wednesday against a “mindless atmosphere of negativity and pessimism” being created in India over the issue of corruption, which, he said, could “do us no good.”

It's true; Indians are negative, depressed and unhappy lately. Much of the cause, though, might be traced back to the government itself.

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a report highlighting the “deepening economic doubts” within India. Among the major world economies, Indians have suffered the greatest loss of confidence in their country's economic conditions over the past year (2011-12), the report said.

Fewer than half of those surveyed were satisfied with the direc tion in which the country was headed and were happy about current economic conditions. Only 45 percent were hopeful that the economy would improve in the next year. This last indicator has seen a dramatic drop from last year, when 60 percent of people were hopeful of better days ahead.

For the 45 percent who described the condition of the economy as bad, the government was the “leading culprit,” according to the report. Pew attributed this sentiment to “months of government missteps, deadlock in the Indian Parliament and widely exposed incidents of public corruption.”

Meanwhile, a study released last year based on World Health Organization data found that Indians had the most “major depressive episodes” among the nations studied, with  35.9 percent of the population having experienced one during their lifetime, far above neighboring China's 12 percent.

Just this week, the International Monetary Fund pegged India's economic growth this year at below 5 percent, the lowest forecast in about a decade, citing “unusual uncertainty” about the country's future, related in part to sluggish structural reforms.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that just a few years ago, when the economy was growing at more than 8 percent, the term “India Shining” was almost unavoidable.  A favorite of newspaper headline writers, conference organizers, the Bharatiya Janata Party and television channels, the phrase symbolized the optimism and promise felt by a nation unleashed from its slow-growth past.

India Ink readers: How are you feeling about India today?