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India Considers Seeking Dollars from NRIs and Raising Interest Rates — Can the Rupee Still Be Saved?
The Reserve Bank of India is now reportedly considering an NRI dollar deposit scheme and sovereign dollar bonds. Yes, the same government that spent years claiming India had become a golden bird under its watch is about to go door-to-door, asking NRIs for dollars to save the rupee. Bloomberg’s Anup Roy reports that the central bank is exploring ways to raise dollars, including hiking interest rates, because the rupee is in free fall. A 12% drop against the dollar in just one year. RBI has been selling dollars, but it isn’t working. And when interest rates go up, your EMIs will shoot up, fuel prices will rise again, school fees, taxi fares — everything. This isn’t because of Iran. This is the result of 13 years of economic mismanagement by the Modi government.
The Confession of a Devotee
Surjit Bhalla, the economist who rarely missed a chance to applaud the Modi government, has finally admitted that the economy is sinking. In a column that broke the camp’s silence, Bhalla noted that India’s GDP averaged 6% over the last 35 years — and 13 of those years belong to this government. He can’t explain why the BJP keeps winning elections despite a crumbling economy. He says he does not doubt the electoral process, but his own numbers raise uncomfortable questions: how does a party win mandate after mandate when the ground beneath everyone’s feet is giving way? Vote deletions running into crores, 27 lakh voters disenfranchised, counting centre videos demanded but never released by the Election Commission — as Scroll reported. Bhalla might not ask, but we must.
The Growth That Never Was
Bhalla is not the first to say the India growth story is a lie. Arvind Subramanian in 2019 showed GDP was overstated by about 2.5% between 2011 and 2017. Real growth was closer to 4.5%, not 7%. Former chief statistician Pronab Sen raised the alarm as early as 2017. Ashok Modi’s “India Fake Growth Story” paper drew vicious trolling. Professor R. Nagaraj of IGIDR flagged the figures in 2015. Arun Kumar, Rajeshwari Sengupta, Pramod Sinha, Ravindra Dholakia — all have been telling us for years that the emperor has no clothes. Bhalla is just a late arrival at the truth.
The favourite slogan — “India is the fastest growing major economy” — collapses the moment you remove the word “major”. Since 2014, India ranks 9th in GDP growth among all countries, and 8th in per capita GDP growth. In dollar terms, the picture is even grimmer.
India trails Bangladesh and Ethiopia in per capita dollar income growth. Source: Surjit Bhalla compilation, IMF data.
| Metric | India's Rank |
|---|---|
| GDP Growth (since 2014) | 9th |
| Per Capita GDP Growth | 8th |
| Per Capita Growth (Dollar Terms) | 16th |
Yet the propaganda machine kept running. Ministers repeated the lie, and the Prime Minister himself declared, “140 crore Indians are not satisfied with being the fastest growing economy, we want to be the third largest soon.” The reality is a country struggling to touch 6% when it needs 8% to even pretend it can develop.
Distraction as Policy: Cow, Bulldozer, Toffee
While the economy bled, what were we debating? Pakistan. Cow. Muslims. Madrasas. Bulldozer justice. DJ dance in front of mosques. The government and its godi media manufactured a permanent circus so that nobody would notice the hollowing out of the nation’s economic foundation. Free rations for 80 crore people were not a sign of a caring state — they were an admission that prosperity never reached them. In Bihar, over 1.5 crore women got ₹10,000 each during elections — vote-buying, plain and simple. Forty percent of graduates are unemployed. Sixty percent of BA degree holders don’t find a permanent job in the first year, and those who do earn meagre salaries. When young Indians started calling themselves cockroaches in protest, the government silenced them: social media accounts deleted, the “Cockroach Janata Party” Twitter account banned even as its Instagram outpaced the BJP’s follower growth.
The Credibility Trap and the AI Blindspot
Former RBI Governor D. Subbarao, in a widely discussed Hindustan Times article, says the rupee’s fall cannot be blamed only on oil prices. He warns of a credibility trap: if the world sees the RBI trying and failing to defend the rupee, it signals that the situation is beyond control, triggering a capital flight panic. India has also missed the AI bus. Global money is now chasing markets that lead in technology and AI, and India, despite all the chest-thumping, is a marginal player. Subbarao calls it a margin player. This, too, has battered the rupee. Remember the stock market frenzy after COVID? People pulled money from banks and poured it into equities without any underlying economic expansion. Companies weren’t investing, but stock prices soared. That bubble has now burst, and the common retail investor has been destroyed — two years of negative returns, and not a word about it in the prime-time debates.
“An economic storm is coming, the kind India has never seen... Modi went and ate toffee with Meloni and made videos... When he returns, the storm will hit the poor, the farmers, the youth... Then he will fold his hands and say, ‘Hang me, it’s not my fault.’” — Rahul Gandhi, months before the rupee rout.
The Amrit Kaal Scam
In December 2023, when the cracks were already visible, the government launched “Viksit Bharat 2047” and the “Voice of Youth” campaign. The Prime Minister spoke of an Amrit Kaal — a golden era — and asked everyone to work beyond limits. But to hit the developed-country target, India needs 8% annual GDP growth. The reality is stuck around 6%. UN DESA projects 6.4% for 2026-27, down from 7.5% in the previous year. Journalist Anindya Chakravarty pointed out that GST was supposed to add 2% to GDP. Since its introduction, average growth (excluding COVID) is 6.3%. Without GST, would growth have been 3.5-4.3%? The numbers scream that the much-touted reform didn’t deliver.
When Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman suddenly tweeted a string of rhetorical questions defending Jan Dhan, Mudra loans, and free grain, Congress’s Pawan Khera held a press conference that few channels cared to show. The facts he laid out were devastating: 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts are inoperative, 62% of the remaining hold less than ₹1,000. The central government has collected ₹43 lakh crore in petroleum taxes over 12 years. Public sector oil companies earned ₹12,400 crore in just a few hours from price hikes. Whose Amrit Kaal is this? The middle class is being crushed, and the finance minister’s threadbare defence was met with silence.
The Trump Factor: Toffees and Trade-offs
Prime Minister Modi’s foreign visits are assessed by the number of hugs, toffee moments, and dance reels, not by outcomes. Why did relations with Trump sour? What did India concede? Rahul Gandhi alleges that the Prime Minister traded national data to get Adani’s case cancelled in the US. The Telegraph’s Hans van Leeuwen wrote that “Trump trampled Modi’s dreams.” Yet the BJP’s supporters, who are also Trump supporters, don’t ask. India wants to know how much of this economic devastation is linked to those backroom compromises. If Modi wants India to be taken seriously, says the expert, he must turn the economy into a powerhouse that can rival China. Instead, manufacturing has declined over the last decade, India’s global industrial output is one-tenth of China’s, and deep-tech investment is abysmal. Winning elections by any means and running an economy are two different things. Controlling power, resources, and the media can win votes. Economic reality is like sand — it slips through even the tightest fist.
The Final Illusion
As the common citizen is pushed towards poverty and the middle class is pulverised, the godi media will switch on the Vishwaguru stories again. If you have enjoyed these fairy tales so far, you have no right to ask why the rupee is in a ditch. You should thank the Modi government: every time you are in pain, it expertly distracts you from your own wound.
Facts
- Rupee depreciated 12% against the dollar in one year; RBI exploring NRI dollar deposits and rate hikes.
- India’s average GDP growth over 35 years is 6%, with 13 years under the Modi government.
- Since 2014, India ranks 9th in GDP growth, 8th in per capita GDP growth, and 16th in dollar-term per capita growth.
- Bangladesh (8.3%) and Ethiopia (7.2%) outpaced India (4.7%) in per capita dollar income growth.
- 40% of graduates unemployed; 60% of BA graduates lack a permanent job in the first year.
- 15 crore Jan Dhan accounts are inoperative; 62% of the rest hold less than Rs 1,000.
- Central government collected Rs 43 lakh crore from petroleum taxes in 12 years.
- UN DESA projects India’s GDP growth at 6.4% for 2026-27, down from 7.5% previously.
- India’s share in global industrial output is about one-tenth of China’s.
Criticisms
- The Modi government has hollowed out the Indian economy while using statistical jugglery and a captive media to sell a fake growth story.
- For 13 years, communal polarisation, bulldozer theatrics, and manufactured nationalism were used to hide catastrophic unemployment, inflation, and a falling rupee.
- Electoral integrity has been compromised through mass voter deletions, opaque counting, and direct vote-buying with free rations and cash handouts.
- Flagship schemes like Jan Dhan are a sham — the majority of accounts are either dead or near-empty, while crony capitalists thrive.
- The government extracted Rs 43 lakh crore from citizens via fuel taxes while offering 5 kg of free grain as a sleight-of-hand to manufacture consent.
- The Prime Minister’s personal equations with foreign leaders, especially Donald Trump, appear to have compromised national interests, with possible data-for-legal-relief deals going unquestioned.
- The ‘Viksit Bharat’ and ‘Amrit Kaal’ narratives are cynical election props that mask the brutal math: India needs 8% growth, barely manages 6%, and the middle class is being systematically destroyed.
- A subservient ‘godibachi’ media launders the government’s failures, deletes dissenting voices, and converts every economic disaster into a Toffee-and-Dance spectacle.
Disclaimer: This writeup was generated with the assistance of AI (DeepSeek). While AI has been used to organize and present the information, the facts, data points, and criticisms referenced are based on public reporting and documented analysis. Readers are encouraged to verify claims independently and consult original sources.
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