The Hindu 5 Mar 2023
It always made me wonder why the phrase “Hindu Rate of Growth” doesn’t hurt the sensibilities of the Hindu majority of India …
What is Raghuram Rajan suggesting really? Is India’s GDP created only by the Hindus? Do the other religious groups contribute less or more ? Why do you characterise economic growth with a religious label Mr RR? The US and European economies today are recession ridden and are growing at less than 1.5% P.a. Why don’t you call it the Christian rate of growth? The Islamic world has economies whose rate of growth is nothing it could boast about… do you dare call their growth rates as Muslim Rate of Growth?
I can understand petty street-politicians, columnists, and TV talk-show anchors use the term Hindu Rate of Growth to sound so very clever and glib. But you Sir Prof.Rajan are a world renowned economist. Why must you mix religion with economics? Why stoop so low?
Why should GDP growth rate be associated with a particular religion and relate it then synonymously to inertia, sluggishness or backwardness? Isn’t it being offensive? Is it becoming of you ? Hindu rate of growth is a term describing low Indian economic growth rates from the 1950s to the 1980s, which averaged around 4%. The term was coined by Raj Krishna, an Indian economist, in 1978 to describe the slow growth. Since then the phrase has become a convenient pejorative to refer to somnolent economies.
Only 400 years ago India accounted for 25% of world GDP. No one then called the Indian economy grown as the Hindu rate of growth, did they?
What has Hinduism got to do with pace of economic growth? Hinduism has always placed great importance on the creation of national wealth. The “Arthasaastra” as a seminal treatise on economics predates Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” or Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” by several hundreds of centuries. In Hindu social philosophy “artha” or the creation of economic value is one of the 4 “purusharthas” — the principal goals of life .
A dynamic economy and Hinduism are conceptually not anathema to one another. So why is this economist pseudo-guru from Chicago University senselessly tagging the adjective “HINDU” to describe his own specious concept of economic growth ?
I find it very offensive . Don’t you, if you call yourself a Hindu ?
Sudarshan Madabushi