The title of this blog is clearly very debatable and can be highly argumentative. Am not a politician and I do not have any politically motivated objectives to write this. Out of own interest I have been understanding India’s natural resources , demographics and economic reforms and after looking at data from common man’s perspective I came to conclusion that Sonia Gandhi is hindering India’s growth for her personal objectives though we have very good economists as part of Congress party. So I leave to the readers of this blog to form their conclusion from the analysis I am putting here. This is very high-level and data for this used from CIA’s (Central Investigation Agency, US) fact book.

First let’s look at the some of data about India and other countries esp. USA.

India is blessed with huge growing & young population which is a big asset to our nation. Some of the Industries have already banked on this like IT to make it big on the world market. India has around 70 crore people between the age of 15 and 65 years and another 36 crores below 15 years. This totals to 106 crores out of 114 crores of total population which around 92%. Where has US has around 13% of population above 65 yrs i.e more or less they are either retired or about to retire . Though a significant portion of 106 crores may not be employable due to illiteracy and other reasons still if we assume 50% of 70 crores are employable the it will be 35 crores which is more than US total population of 30 crores. This is one of the reasons why countries like USA and UK have been encouraging people to emigrate from other countries. India has a high birth rate and low death rate which helps in continuing to have this young generation for next few decades.

India is one the countries with lowest literacy (61%) among the developing & developed nations. This is known fact for more than 20 years and despite that our government spends only 3.2% of GDP on education where as all other developed countries with 99% literacy spend more than 4% (USA – 5.3%, UK 5.6%, Australia 4.5 %). On top of this we have Education cess introduced.

Given that we have a huge growing population, its imperative for us to educate as many as of these so that they can be employable and contribute to the GDP. India’s biggest drawback is the low per capita income due to lot of unemployment. Secondly the low infrastructure is a blessing in disguise and is more of a blessing now in the current global crisis. If we look at the total no. of road ways and total land area, India is again lowest with resp.to % of roadways present to the land area. This is a significant area to invest which will provide employment to many in rural areas. Again if we look at no. of airports present, India has only 346 airports against 14000 of USA. The airport density in USA is one port for 20000 people where was it is 32 lacs in India for gross population and around 1 lac if we assume 5% people in age 15 – 65 yrs (70 crores ) can be potential fliers . So this is another area where we can invest and create employment.

Similarly there are many other areas where India has opportunity to invest and aid for its own growth. But unfortunately significant amount of our GDP goes into subsidies and import of Oil and Natural gas. If we look at India’s reserves for Oil and Gas and our production, we are again low on that ratio against USA. What our govt should do is increase production of Oil and Gas thus reducing imports and saving that expenditure which can utilized for sectors like Infrastructure and Education.

But these subsidies and imports are there for ages in India, how is Congress coming to bad word here? Its was never there in India’s history to give away things to people freely like congress is giving. Though many sectors in India are largely depending on subsidies which are primarily meant for growth of that sector but recently the subsidies are spent on an objective to win in the next elections. Giving free power to farmers is a good but did it increase the agriculture output and contributed for GDP growth? No. Subsidizing petrol or natural gas is good for a common man but is it creating employment and aiding growth of GDP? If petrol price is higher then govt should improve public transport and increase oil production rather subsidizing petrol. On these lines most of the policies taken by congress have further eroded lot of money which could have better utilized for economic growth. Now the trend congress has established with giving away things to free , it has spurn a culture of non economical politics esp. in states like Andhra Pradesh other parties are promising to give cash and color TV’s freely . Unfortunately we cannot blame them as a common will not understand economics and will vote for that party which gives off things freely like Congress. Unfortunately congress party was not like this before. After death of Rajiv Gandhi congress party lost its glory and had to Rahul Gandhi needs to come back to politics and take on PM position. To make this happen, congress has to win lot of votes which can be only achieved by taking advantage of India’s illiterate population who understands less of economics and free subsidies. So though we have great Indian economists as part of Congress part like Chidambaram, man Mohan Singh, still we are not able to implement good reforms due to personal objectives of Sonia Gandhi. So I call her impediment for India’s growth.