Indian Economy : News,Discussions & Updates

TIL petrol, LNG, LPG, automobiles, clothing, and snacks have little to no taxes. That's not how it feels when I pay for my groceries and living expenses, though.

Oil is imported, so high taxes. Automobiles stress creaking infra, so high taxes until infra is built and serviced. Finding solutions to both is decades away. Hydrogen needs to step in for oil and cheaper automobiles requires robust public transportation systems, which is currently being built.

Grocery prices are increasing due to transportation costs, but it's still stable. The new farm laws would have reduced prices, but that failed.

And there you go, trivializing everyone under the sun. Do you understand that someone could use the same line when you complain about your state government increasing prices?

Taxes for essentials are peanuts.

When you talk of Mumbai, its not only traffic. It's everything you hate in Bangalore but dirtier, less maintained, and multiple times more expensive.

It's all part and parcel of pop growth being faster than infra growth. The size of the road remains the same, but vehicular density is increasing. Less babies in cities means more immigration from outside cities. They are all connected.

True, it's twice as rich as Mumbai (per capita), which says a lot given Mumbai's head start when India became independent.

NRI money.

Low debt levels? I keep repeating Madhya Pradesh because it is a perfect example of near-continuous BJP rule since the start of the century, with a double-engine government since 2014. It has high debt levels, mediocre living standards, and a widening per capita income gap.

And as mentioned, Odisha did a phenomenal job at managing growth and finances while maintaining a generous welfare state. It did not have a double engine until 2024.

MP is primarily agrarian. Odisha is primarily industry and services and has a very large mining industry. They are not comparable.

This is where I agree. Bengal is a national tragedy. It once used to be the richest state in India, richer than Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. And now it's a wasteland, drowning in its hubris as other states leapfrog it. And as for Kolkata, yeah, it's a mess of epic proportions.
The level of stagnation should be apparent in that Rajasthan, a bimaru state, has a higher per capita income today than Bengal.

Let's see how people choose to vote next year.

More like that is what happens when incompetent communists take over. There are many examples of economically left-wing governments that have overseen successful economic growth in their respective states. The Tamil chief ministers, some Karnataka chief ministers, Naveen Patnaik and, to some extent, CBN and KCR, are examples of the same.

TN leftists are pro-West leftists based around Christianity. They are not full commies like the ones in Kerala and WB. And TN's people are to be credited for their good fortune. They voted for pro-economic policies while people of Kerala and WB voted with their feet, so the govt had to deliver to stay in power.

And a reminder to everyone: It was the sangh that supported the current chief minister of Bengal to take down the communists.

That's how it's always been. Hamas came to power the same way. It's the people that vote that are to blame.

No, you are mistaken here. The GDP growth figures you see are real GDP growth. These are calculated at constant prices, or base year prices, which currently happens to be 2011-12 for India.

The growth you see reflected on headlines (like India's 6.4% in 2024-25) are in constant, i.e., 2011-12 prices. The growth estimate is 9.5% for 2024-25 in current prices.

Similarly, the growth figures you see for states (like Tamil Nadu's 9.69%, Bihar's 9.38%, and Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh's 7-7.35%) are in constant prices.

While you are correct in stating that Bihar's 15% growth rate is in current prices, it appears you believe that this growth is without taking inflation into account, which is wrong.

Reference: PRESS NOTE ON SECOND ADVANCE ESTIMATES OF ANNUAL GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT FOR 2024-25
In the above source, refer to Annexure A, Statement 1A: Statement 1A: Second Advance Estimates of Annual GDP for FY 2024-25 and its Expenditure Components(at 2011- 12 Prices) and Statement 2A: Second Advance Estimates of Annual GDP for FY 2024-25 and its Expenditure Components(at Current Prices)


If you mean real GDP includes inflationary effects in the calculation, then you are wrong.

Real economic growth does not include for inflation. Real GDP is the value of all goods and services (subject to usual conditions) calculated in constant/base-year prices. It means you are calculating the value of goods and services produced without factoring in their increased value due to an increase in their prices (inflation). You are essentially discounting inflation. This is because you are trying to calculate just the increase in the production of goods and services or an improvement in the value addition to the same amount of goods and services or both.

But you calculate your nominal GDP (and therefore your nominal growth rate) at current-year prices. Since your current-year prices will be different from the base-year prices (or the last fiscal year prices), you are factoring in inflation (the change in the current-year prices). This price change (inflation) ensures an increase in your GDP, even if the production of goods and services is essentially stagnant. In other words, your production output might be the same in quality and composition as last year (which gives you zero real GDP growth), but if their prices have risen (merely due to a rise in demand due to a money supply or population or some exogeneous factor), you will have a nominal GDP growth.

This is why a very rough way of calculating nominal GDP growth is to add your real GDP growth rate with your CPI (Chained Price Index: different from the retail CPI).

In short, real GDP growth is calculated without adding the effects of inflation (increase in prices), while nominal GDP growth is calculated by including inflationary price changes.

Yep, you're right. Constant prices peg rates to an earlier year, for us it's 2011-12 for now, while current prices are for the same year.

So India's GDP growth last year was 6.5% was real growth in constant prices.

But we have to GSDP growth in current prices, nominal growth. You can see Bihar's estimate for next year here relative to all-India's nominal growth of an estimated 9-9.5%.
The Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) of Bihar for 2025-26 (at current prices) is projected to be Rs 10.97 lakh crore, amounting to growth of 22% over 2024-25.

When you are expected to have such a high nominal growth when inflation is very low, it skews the number when you calculate for constant prices from almost 15 years ago due to base year limitations. For example, there was no electronics manufacturing back then.

My comment was more about a state's revenue generation capacity but sure.

Bimaru states earn less money, but revenue support from center is relatively the same for all states. It means less money for richer states, but in return the development of new markets over time.

Agreed. Do you know who else most of South India consciously kept out? The BJP. And they will keep doing that, mark my words, and mostly, they'll keep outperforming BJP-ruled states (maybe except Gujarat, which they'll match).

That said, the party you hate is wrecking havoc in Telangana, so you might be right about them, for all I know. But then, the party you love is being an utter disgrace in Maharashtra (and the triple-engine Mumbai), so who knows?

I am apolitical. I prefer BJP in the center and used to prefer Congress in Karnataka. But the minute they decided to kick out SM Krishna, they changed, and now we have this crap today. Plus too much corruption.

Congress is no longer a secular party, they never were, but it's become more pronounced now. And quite literally, BJP is the only party left that's actually working for the middle class and the country.

They have been saying this for a decade now, and except for Uttar Pradesh, I've yet to see significant manufacturing investment flow into these states. Even for Uttar Pradesh, and the immense amounts of money and patronage it receives from the union government, its economic performance is mediocre compared to Tamil Nadu or Karnataka.

It's in the process.

Let's see where it goes.

Name it. Which central government-funded university are you talking about? And best compared to what? I can speak for the engineering and management domains. I studied at one of the 5-6 universities that you would consider the very best (tier-1, institute of eminence, you name it). I visited multiple of these universities you would consider the very best. Heck, my graduation was pretty recent, so I know what I'm talking about.

And the "best" universities in India don't hold a candle to other premier universities in Asia (forget about the West).


Again, seriously, name it. Which private university do you consider high-quality? In engineering, there's only BITS Pilani (barely 1000 BE seats in its main campus). Name one more. I'll wait. In management? There's ISB Hyderabad, SP Jain Mumbai, and XLRI (all combined, <1600 seats). Name one more. Again, I'll wait.

Do you seriously, honestly, think 1000 engineering seats and 1600 MBA seats that you could call high quality in the private sector are enough for a country like India?


What dregs are you talking about here? Do you realize that the budgets for IITs and NITs have been frozen for a few years now? And that the budgets for IIMs were halved last year? If these are your dregs, it's better not to talk seriously about education here.

It's about the value they provide after graduation to the individual in their career, and not before, because, as a country, we are not rich enough for direct competition with other universities on every metric. So quality is being relative here.

Once we become a $13000-15000 in terms of per capita, our quality will begin to match global standards.

I finished my schooling only towards the end of the last decade, so I'm not sure about the last 2 decades part. If you wanted to study in the CBSE board, in good private schools, you could study in Class XI or XII for Rs 60-70 thousand a year. These days, you have to pay Rs 2 lakhs to get your child into primary school. And then another Rs 1-2 lakhs on coaching and tuition. I have seen these prices rise in real time.

That seems normal for a 3 times rise in prices since then. Inflation is real, thank UPA for screwing things up for a decade too. Salaries at the high level have increased faster than that, hence the overinflated prices for high quality services, like private education.

No, I am not. The central government can always increase Kendriya Vidyalayas. They can always improve their existing schools. They can always fund education. Their not doing so is a policy choice. Keeping CBSE central school seats frozen is a policy choice. And no student old enough to opine on these considers this policy choice as healthy for education.

Maybe you should demand more from the government as well.

KVs and other central schools are meant to service central govt employees, so they don't have the need to expand. It goes against the mandate provided to states as well, since school education for the masses is primarily left to the states.

That's not luck. That's hard work, ambition, skills and sacrifice, for both the parents and the children.

Not exactly. You need the others for stability, but luck plays a huge factor if you wanna create assets. I'm talking about young age, in your early to mid 20s.

You could end up with a low salary for many years or end up with a very high salary in just a year or two, it depends a lot on your choices, but primarily your luck. For example, this guy I know joined a new company after 3 years of grinding crap in his previous one, a call center. He had saved some 4 or 5 lakhs, he took another loan from family and friends and bought 10L worth of stock in a newly setup startup company via ESOPs, another call center. At the end of 3 years, his investment was well over 4 Cr. He was 24 by then and no college. He had joined a call center right after high school, so his only skill was in knowing English. And this was 5 years ago.

Your father could be a middle-class employee and can choose to invest in your education instead of bribing his superiors. You could grind yourself down and secure seats in the best colleges. And then you could invest time and money on studies in the said college instead of alcohol and sex and get placed in a good company. And then, you could be a filial son and care for your parents for burning away their life to lighten yours up.

So yeah, that's not luck. And by not funding education, the government is merely making it ever more difficult, ever more draining, for both the students and their parents.

I guess you will find out some day that it's not that simple.

Pretty much everything you learn in school and college has little to do with real life.

You could waste away all your entire education life and still end up successful. Or you could do really well in school and still end up in a bad way.

The point of schools is to train you to be predictable, which makes you operable in society and pliable towards authority. And colleges create standards for your future employers to judge you on. That's all there is to them. At the minimum you have a higher probability of netting a good, stable job compared to others, but getting rich requires wholly different skills, never mind luck.

Being too good early on is also a problem, 'cause the people above you will suppress you. So this guy with ESOPs just kept his head down and worked at the same level without climbing up so one day some manager or director just jealous or threatened by his rise doesn't have him kicked out through some fake sexual harrassment case or some other method. So he's happy where he is while he makes bank. By the time he's in his mid-30s, he could move out with 100Cr in his pockets, free to do whatever he wants.

You know your dad could do all that you mentioned, and you could still be forced to maybe sell assets or (if you have a good job) drain yourself dry if you find yourself with a health scare. That's how expensive private healthcare is, and unless you are a politician's relative, you are not getting into AIIMS Delhi.

And if you plan on saying people should live healthily, mind you, I'm pretty young and fit. That doesn't make me immune from the thousand different ways I could end up in a medical emergency.

Yep. So things can get way worse if you do not have assets. Most people without assets are always treading a very thin line between stability and poverty.
 
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Hydrogen needs to step in for oil and cheaper automobiles requires robust public transportation systems, which is currently being built.
With present challenges in generation, storage, and efficiently using Hydrogen as fuel economically, I like to opine that sustainable hydrogen economy is still at least decade away. EVs are older than ICE vehicles, but since last decade only things are progressing in this area.
 
With present challenges in generation, storage, and efficiently using Hydrogen as fuel economically, I like to opine that sustainable hydrogen economy is still at least decade away. EVs are older than ICE vehicles, but since last decade only things are progressing in this area.

Hydrogen requires scale. The Chinese will achieve it first, followed by the West and India. So yeah, a decade away before regular folks start seeing affordable products in India, roughly the time it will take for robust public transportation to deliver in cities.