Three years of Narendra Modi government | India
In May 2014, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi, with the promise of development for all.
Modi promised employment to millions of youth who join the job market every year, and to end corruption.
In the past three years, more jobs have been lost than created, while the rise of far-right Hindu nationalists poses a danger to the unity of this diverse nation of 1.3 billion people.
Did Modi deliver on his promises? Al Jazeera takes a look at the progress made in certain key sectors.
India spends a little under three percent of the GDP on education, according to the World Bank data. Although there are still about 300 million people illiterate, government expenditure on education has historically remained low. Countries such as Brazil and South Africa have spent at least six percent of their GDP on education since 2014.
According to the Indian Labour Ministry data, about one million people enter the workforce every year.
Prime Minister Modi had promised to create 10 million jobs in five years.
Job creation has crashed down to 135,000 during 2015-16, from 421,000 in 2013-14 – the last year of the previous government.
Healthcare
India currently ranks 154 among 195 countries in the Healthcare Index [PDF]. Public health expenditure has remained stagnant at 1 percent. The doctor-patient ratio in India was about 1 to 1,700 in 2015, according to a report by the Medical Council of India [PDF].
Per capita health expenditure
The government expenditure on health remains low. As per World Bank estimates, the per capita healthcare expenditure in India is about $60. This sum is paltry when compared with indicators in 2014 from China (around $400) or Brazil (around $1,000).
Economic growth
According to World Bank estimates, India’s GDP has steadily increased over a decade, but income inequality has been rising rapidly.
The richest 1 percent of Indians own 58.4 percent of the country’s wealth, while in China 43.8 percent of the wealth is owned by the top 1 percent.
Wealth distribution
While wealth has been rising in India, the share of wealth fails to match the population share. According to the Global Wealth Report 2016, published by Credit Suisse Group, 96 percent of the adult population has wealth below $10,000. On the other hand, a small fraction of the population (just 0.3 percent of adults), has wealth over $100,000, which translates to roughly 2.4 million people.
Around 70 percent of India’s population resides in rural areas, where nearly 50 percent of the total workforce is employed. Under Modi, the agricultural sector growth was only 1.7 percent, which is less than half of the sector’s growth in the past three years of the previous government at 3.6 percent.
Foreign Direct Investment
In 2015, India attracted $44bn in foreign investment or 2.5 percent of the world FDI inflows. In terms of yearly inflows, India still ranks far behind China ($250bn), Hong Kong ($181bn), Singapore ($65bn) and the US $380bn).
Source: Al Jazeera
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