DNA Edit: Nothing Hindu about it – Sadly, a disparaging term has staged a comeback

A long-abandoned term, once the favourite of social economists and Left liberal intelligentsia, is back in vogue. A Twitter war has broken out over a tabloid headline ‘With GDP at 5%, Hindu growth rate in sight’. The Hindu rate of growth is a disparaging term referring to the low annual growth rate of the Indian economy before the economic liberalisation of 1991. Between the 1950s to 1980s, growth stagnated around 3.5%, while per capita income growth averaged a measly 1.3%. Outraged social media users say there is no connection between the low GDP rate and the Hindu way of life. The slowdown is a result of various factors, unconnected to religion in any way. 

According to official data released on Friday, the country’s GDP grew at the slowest pace in over six years at 5% during the April-June quarter of 2019-20. The sharp decline in the growth rate from 5.8% in the previous quarter was mainly due to deceleration in manufacturing and subdued agriculture output. That such a term could even be used is a sign that this once-important group of people — the know-all liberals — are receding into insignificance. The word ‘Hindu’ was used by economists from this school to imply that the Hindu outlook of fatalism and contentedness was responsible for this slow growth rate. 

Later day economists rejected this connection and correctly attributed the growth rate to typically socialist protectionism and interventionist economic policies (which also came to be known as the Licence Raj) rather than to a specific religion or to the attitude of the adherents of a particular religion. Economic liberalisation of the early 1990s, which has heralded a growth rate that hovers between 6% and 9%, had successfully pushed the term out of business — until last week.