Was India performed better economically under PM Manmohan Singh?

Well, under PV Narasimha Rao when LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization) reform was introduced in 1991, India faced so many problems economically. Our Forex reserve was all time low. So a new change would not impact much initially. But it helped India in long run to eradicate poverty. So under Rao’s first year India’s GDP just grew 1.1%. Under his 5 year tenure the GDP grew at 5.1% rate. The economic policies are little bit stable when A.B. Vajpayee took office and India’s GDP grew 5.9% over his 6 year tenure. When Manmohan Singh took office he delivered 7.7% growth over ten years.

During Singh’s tenure he faced the financial crisis of 2008 that damaging financial institutions globally, culminating with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, and an international banking crisis. There was no planned lockdown due to any virus outbreak but the financial crisis impacted Indian stock market and forex reserve.

BSE Sensex was 20206.95 on 28 Dec 2007 that reached a low 8915.21 on 21 Nov 2008. It took almost 3 years to regain position when on 22 Oct 2010, BSE Sensex again reached 20165.86. Compare that with CoVID-19 pandemic. Pre lockdown era, on 14 Feb 2020, BSE Sensex closed at 41257.74. Sensex reached a low 25981.24 on lockdown starts at 23 March. That bounced back in just 7 and half months when on 5 Nov Sensex touched 41340.16. By 14 Dec, 2020 it has closed at a record 46253.46.


Similar story can be visible in foreign exchange (forex) reserve. During 1991 LPG, India’s forex reserve reached record low of $ 5.8 billion. Before financial crisis on May 2008, India’s forex reserve was US$ 314.6 billion. That value shrank to support the economy in 2008 financial crisis. By Dec 2010 forex reserve reached US$ 297.3 billion. It took 6 years to reach the same value when India’s forex reserve reached US$ 304 billion on March 2014. Let’s compare the similar scenario during lockdown. India’s forex reserve in week ended 6 March was US$ 487.23 billion. But 9 months later in the week ended Dec 4, India’s forex reserve reached all-time high of US$ 579.35 billion.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Asian Dream - China, Japan and India

Image
Many experts, politicians, scholars believe 21st century is going to be “Asian Century”. To make this a reality 3 countries should come and work together – Soaring Dragon, Rising Elephant and Assertive Godzilla i.e. China, India and Japan. Below are the reasons I would like to mention – 1. Nominal GDP wise top 3 Asian countries are China, Japan and India. In terms of PPP, the order is China, India and Japan. For a rising Asia, these 3 countries should join hands. 2. In terms of Forex Reserve, the Top 3 Asian economies are China (>$3 Trillion), Japan (> $1 Trillion) and India (> $500 Billion). Surprisingly these 3 nations are also top 5 in the World. 3. China, Japan and India also has 6 (JPX, SSE, SEHK, SZSE, BSE, NSE) out of World’s Top 12 biggest Stock exchanges in terms of Market capitalization. Imagine the enormous potential if we create something like Euronext in Asia. 4. China, Japan, South Korea, India and Taiwan are always featured in top 10 nation Fortune Global 2000 c
Read more

India's Supercomputer Journey

Image
 India's Supercomputer journey is no less than an astounding achievement. In 1987, USA declined when India asked to purchase Supercomputers, developed by CRAY thinking India may develop nuclear weapon from it. The CRAY supercomputer, designated No. 1205 by Cray, was built for the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore but it was never delivered. At a conference at CSIR (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research), in 1987, Rajiv Gandhi was discussing this problem with many renowned Indian scientists. They expressed their discontent on the PM asking other countries to setup India’s supercomputer. DoE established the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with initial investment of Rs 300 million produced PARAM 8000 supercomputer in 1991. Dr. Vijay P. Bhatkar is known as Father of PARAM Series Supercomputer. Indian scientists developed their supercomputer by linking together as many as 256 small, readily available computers in a technique known as massive parallel
Read more

India's preparation for upcoming Tokyo Olympics

Image
 As we are going towards Tokyo Olympic next year, let's see how we performed in Asian and World Championships in 2019. Archery Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 1 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze World ('s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands) 0 Gold, 1 Silver, 2 Bronze Athletics Asian (Doha, Qatar) 3 Gold, 7 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Doha, Qatar) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze (Created 3 new National Records) Badminton Asian (Wuhan, China) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze World (Basel, Switzerland) 1 Gold, 0 Silver, 1 Bronze Boxing Asian (Bangkok, Thailand) 2 Gold, 4 Silver, 7 Bronze World (Men : Yekaterinburg, Women : Ulan-Ude, Russia) 0 Gold, 2 Silver, 4 Bronze Cycling   (As this is new sport, considering Junior Asian and World Championship performance of Track Cycling. There are also BMX, Mountain and Road Cycling) Asian (Jakarta, Indonesia) 4 Gold, 4 Silver, 2 Bronze World (Frankfurt, Germany) 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze Fencing Asian (Chiba, Japan) 0 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze
Read more