Majoritarianism will be extremely dangerous for the future of India: Raghuram Rajan

Majoritarianism will be extremely dangerous for the future of India and it should be resisted at every step, noted economist and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said on Saturday.

Addressing a webinar, Rajan emphasised on the need to make the government more responsive to criticism by removing some of the legislative constraints on criticism.

“Our trend towards majoritarianism has enormous consequences, all of them adverse…it is against every economic principle,” he warned. Known for his frank views, Rajan said India needs inclusive growth and the country cannot have inclusive growth by treating any segment of the population as second class citizens.

According to him, majoritarianism is divisive, it divides India at a time when India has to stay together, given external threats that the country faces.

“The way we see majoritarianism playing out, in a sense, will be extremely dangerous for the future of India. I think it should be resisted at every step,” the eminent economist said.

Rajan, currently a Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said that India has strong growth today but one has to be careful about growth numbers.

“Any growth obviously should be celebrated. But we can’t ignore the fact that the strong growth is from disastrous numbers posted in the last fiscal year,” he said.

The eminent economist pointed out that India has been underperforming ever since the global financial crisis.

“We have not created good jobs that we need…despite the strong growth, we are significantly below the pre-pandemic trend line,” he noted.

According to Rajan, India’s export performance has been good but not spectacular.

The eminent economist stressed on increasing female labour force participation in India.

He however added: “Even during the last decade of slow growth India has had some successes But we need to do better.”

Noting that data is needed for making the right decision, Rajan said,” We need a learning government. We should stop suppressing data ,whether it is data on unemployment or data on COVID deaths.”