By Dipak Kurmi
In a week when the world’s geopolitical theatre is dominated by despots, warlords, and demagogues masquerading as leaders, India’s domestic political discourse was once again derailed by a familiar, if bizarre, intervention from the Leader of the Opposition. Rahul Gandhi, a politician known more for rhetorical flair than economic depth, has once again managed to set the agenda—though unintentionally—by declaring, with stunning simplicity, “The Indian economy is dead. Trump is right.” His statement was not made in jest or under duress. He offered this as a matter of fact, supporting a claim made by none other than Donald Trump, the former U.S. President, who had mockingly dismissed India’s economy as “dead” in one of his typically bombastic tirades.
It is both curious and telling that Gandhi—who had only days earlier dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament to call Trump a “liar”—would suddenly find himself siding with the man he had challenged. This contradictory stance is not unfamiliar. Rahul Gandhi’s political legacy is strewn with slogans and accusations that rarely hold under the scrutiny of logic or data, but this latest episode demands closer examination because it is not merely a political swipe—it is an indictment of an economy that, contrary to his statement, has shown resilience and even growth amid global economic turbulence.
Before we delve into Gandhi’s economic revisionism, it’s important to pause and reflect on the nature of Trump’s comment. The former American President has built his reputation on theatrical bluster, not economic analysis. His reductionist comment on India’s economy was not grounded in data or credible economic forecasting—it was a geopolitical dig, part of a larger narrative aimed at discrediting nations that do not align with his transactional worldview. Even seasoned critics of the Modi government found Trump’s “dead economy” jibe to be insulting and absurd. Yet, Gandhi—leader of India’s principal opposition party—chose to echo it.
This echoes the ideological confusion that has long plagued Gandhi’s politics, particularly in the economic domain. Back in 2019, during the general election campaign, he had obsessed over Anil Ambani and the Rafale deal, holding up toy fighter jets with his sister Priyanka Gandhi to dramatize what he claimed was a corrupt defence transaction. At the time, Ambani was positioned as the favoured crony of the Modi regime, the laundromat through which bribes allegedly passed. The charges were loud but legally baseless. When they failed to stick, Ambani was conveniently forgotten—only for Adani to become the next villain in Rahul’s economic morality play. It is a pattern familiar to observers: accusations without evidence, slogans without substance.
What Gandhi seems unwilling—or unable—to appreciate is the actual meaning of a “dead economy.” To call today’s India a failed economic state is not only misleading but historically illiterate. One needs only to revisit the days when his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, ruled India under the shadow of the licence raj. Those were times when economic stagnation was not a rhetorical device but a lived experience. Daily necessities like bread, milk, sugar, and kerosene were rationed with such severity that queuing became a national habit. Luxuries like scooters, cars, and air conditioners were reserved for the elite few who could wait ten years or had the right connections. Imports were virtually banned, and the black market thrived. Indian women, unable to find basic cosmetics or good lingerie in the stores, turned to smugglers in Delhi’s Karol Bagh.
Under the Nehruvian model of command-and-control socialism, the state did not merely regulate the economy—it suffocated it. Entrepreneurs lived in constant fear of inspectors, and business expansion required not market insight but political patronage. The only thriving private sector in those days was the illegal one—smugglers and black marketers became the shadow billionaires of socialist India.
Things began to change in the 1990s when the licence raj was dismantled and India began to liberalise. The entrepreneurial spirit was unleashed, and it is this economic transformation that has formed the foundation of modern India’s growth trajectory. Ironically, Narendra Modi’s early popularity drew on this exact frustration with bureaucratic overreach. His famous declaration—that the government has no business to be in business—resonated deeply with those who remembered the pre-liberalisation era. It was one of the reasons many centrist and economically liberal voters, including those wary of his Hindutva politics, backed him in 2014.
And yet, Modi’s tenure has not been without fault. While he has continued to court global investors and pushed for headline-grabbing schemes like “Startup India” and “Make in India,” his government has also shown a troubling tendency to centralise control and empower bureaucrats. Many of the so-called unicorns born under government-sponsored incubation schemes function more like state enterprises in disguise—dependent on regulation and state largesse rather than genuine innovation. Worse, the entrepreneurial ecosystem continues to be haunted by red tape. Permissions, inspections, and compliance burdens remain a hindrance, and Modi’s promise of dismantling the remnants of the licence raj remains unfulfilled.
Thus, a paradox has emerged. Rahul Gandhi accuses Modi of “killing” the economy, when in fact India’s economic problems are less about destruction and more about incompletion—of reforms left half-finished. Modi, for all his capitalist branding, has yet to truly liberate the Indian economy from the grip of bureaucratic paternalism. His government’s instinctive mistrust of private capital is evident in repeated policy U-turns, from retrospective taxation to sudden bans on exports and imports, often driven more by politics than economics.
Even in this atmosphere, however, to claim the Indian economy is “dead” is not just inaccurate—it is irresponsible. Despite facing shocks like demonetisation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and global inflationary pressures, India remains one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently projected India’s GDP to grow at 6.8% for the year—figures that no dead economy can boast. The country continues to attract foreign direct investment and has made impressive gains in sectors like digital payments, infrastructure, and renewable energy.
Where Rahul Gandhi fails—and fails spectacularly—is in offering a credible alternative. His economic arguments are less policy and more polemic. His shifts from Ambani to Adani, from Rafale to Trump, betray not just inconsistency but a deep unfamiliarity with how economies function. And this is unfortunate, not merely for his own political credibility but for Indian democracy at large. For a strong opposition is essential to a healthy polity. If the Congress Party is to challenge the BJP meaningfully, it must move beyond this rhetoric of collapse and instead build a narrative grounded in facts, vision, and reform.
To return to Modi, the man whom this piece was originally meant to examine, his international stature indeed stands tall—especially in a world where many leaders have turned populist, authoritarian, or absurd. But his domestic policy, particularly on economic reform, is unfinished business. If Trump’s trade tariffs are seen only as a threat and not an opportunity for India to boost self-reliant industrialisation, the fault lies in the gap between Modi’s economic promises and his bureaucratic caution.
For now, perhaps the best that can be said is that India is neither the Shangri-La that the BJP proclaims nor the economic corpse Rahul Gandhi imagines. It is a work in progress. It needs fewer slogans, less drama, and far more policy courage. And it desperately needs an Opposition that can talk economics without sounding like a man stuck in a debate club echo chamber.
Until then, Rahul Gandhi would do well to re-enrol in that short course on Nehruvian economics—not to glorify it, but to understand just how far India has travelled from those days of economic darkness. And perhaps then, he will see that declaring the economy “dead” only revives the ghosts of a past his own party created.
(The writer can be reached at dipakkurmiglpltd@gmail.com)
