Economy & Political Discourse
The Prime Minister criticised the phrase “Hindu rate of growth”, calling it a colonial, divisive, and communalising label that wrongly linked India’s earlier economic stagnation with Hindu identity and culture.
The term refers to India’s low long-term GDP growth—around 3.5–4% annually—from the 1950s to the 1980s, prior to the 1991 liberalisation reforms. Importantly, it denotes a macroeconomic trend, not religion-based economic behaviour or cultural attributes.
Coined by economist Raj Krishna of the Delhi School of Economics, the phrase was originally intended as a critique of India’s policy framework, not its civilisation.
APSC relevance: Useful for understanding India’s pre-reform growth trajectory, economic terminology, and contemporary debates on political framing of economic history.
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