How Modi took advantage of India’s economic growth

Ten years after Narendra Modi was first elected prime minister, India’s economy has nearly doubled. That’s what happens when a country grows at 7 percent a year, as India has done on average since opening its markets to international competition in 1991.

That steady growth has been skilfully repurposed to promote the image of a one-man leadership who can do it all. Along with nationalism and Hindu pride, the idea that Mr Modi can jump-start the economy has been central to his appeal from the start.

And Mr. Modi has shored up India’s economy in ways that matter most to voters: He expanded infrastructure and distributed welfare benefits to the majority of Indians who remain poor by global standards, while the country’s higher-income groups are learning to increase their spending power.

Much of the rest of the world—notably the United States and other Western nations, which want to persuade India to join them in curbing the strategic ambitions of China and Russia—wants India’s economy to grow.

Part of the story may be a shift to manufacturing, as Apple has done in southern India. And investment professionals around the world want India’s successes under Mr Modi to begin paying dividends they can’t get anywhere else.

But even the most eager investors cannot ignore some of the problems facing India as it becomes the world’s newest giant. While Mr Modi basked in the glow of a successful moon landing and the country’s innovative “digital public infrastructure”, the political opposition sought to address a frustrated public that was clamouring for more and better jobs.

The opposition also tried to stir up public anger over Modi’s ties with the country’s biggest industrialists. In the case of Gautam Adani, it seems, this worked neither in politics nor in the markets. Last year, the billionaire’s empire was accused of stock manipulation. But these allegations did not prove true and Adani’s shares rebounded.