Ranjan Solomon
WHEN Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised Ache Din, it was not merely an electoral slogan. It was a moral claim – that governance would be cleaner, the economy stronger, and ordinary Indians more secure. It invoked an assurance of shared prosperity and responsible stewardship of public resources. A decade later, one statistic punctures this promise with brutal clarity: India’s public debt has risen from about ₹34 lakh crore in 2014 to nearly ₹172 lakh crore today. That is a fivefold increase in less than eleven years, unmatched in the country’s recent economic history.
Debt, of course, is not inherently evil. All modern states borrow, particularly during periods of expansion or crisis. The real questions are more fundamental: Who benefits from the borrowing? Who bears the burden? And what kind of economy is this debt building? On these counts, the Modi government’s record deserves far more scrutiny than it receives.
Supporters of the regime often retreat to a familiar defence: India’s debt-to-GDP ratio is “manageable” and comparable to that of other large economies. This argument is technically correct but politically evasive. It treats debt as an abstract macroeconomic indicator rather than a lived social reality. Debt is not neutral. It redistributes resources, shapes policy priorities, and constrains future democratic choices.
India’s total public debt has expanded by roughly ₹ 138 lakh crores since 2014 averaging ₹ 12-13 crore of additional debt every year. This translates to ₹ I lakh crore of new debt every month for more than a decade. Interest payments alone now absorb over 40% of net tax revenue, making debt servicing the single largest item of government of expenditure – larger than health, education, or rural development combined. India has added more public debt in the Modi years than in all previous governments combined since economic liberalisation.
Under Manmohan Singh, India’s debt stood at roughly ₹34–35 lakh crore. That period was far from perfect, and growth was uneven, but borrowing coincided with the expansion of the welfare state. Programmes like MGNREGA, the Right to Education, the National Food Security Act, rural infrastructure expansion, and public investment in health and higher education created at least a partial safety net. Growth, however imperfectly, was accompanied by redistribution.
Today’s borrowing tells a sharply different story. Despite unprecedented debt accumulation, public health spending remains stuck around 1.5% of GDP, among the lowest for major economies. Education spending has stagnated or declined in real terms. Real wages have fallen for large sections of the workforce. Youth unemployment is at historic highs, with government surveys quietly acknowledging that millions of educated young Indians are either jobless or pushed into precarious informal work. The informal sector – India’s largest employer – has expanded, not shrunk. Nutrition indicators have worsened, and India continues to rank poorly on global hunger indices. The obvious question arises: where has the money gone?
A substantial portion has flowed into capital-intensive infrastructure projects – expressways, bullet-train corridors, urban “redevelopment” schemes, and showcase construction projects that photograph well but generate limited employment. These projects favour large contractors and conglomerates while doing little for rural distress or urban informal labour. Infrastructure, when disconnected from human development, becomes spectacle rather than solution.
Unemployment touched a staggering 6.1% in 2017-18, the highest in 45 years (NSSO leak confirmed later by official data). According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a leading business information company over 20 million jobs were lost between 2017 and 2021, with the worst impact on youth, women, and informal workers. Youth unemployment (15-29 years) has hovered between 17 and 23% in recent years – one in five young Indians are willing to work but simply cannot find a job. This is among the lowest globally. Post-Covid “recovery” has been driven largely by self-employment and informal work, not stable salaried jobs – signalling distress, not dynamism. India is growing, but it is not an economy expanding without absorbing its own people.
Ache din came along for large corporates enjoying tax cuts, loan write-offs, and state-backed monopolies, for the super-rich whose wealth multiplied even during crises; and for a political elite insulated from economic pain. It did not arrive to bail out farmers facing falling incomes, workers trapped in informality, unemployed youth or households paying the price through inflation, fuel taxes, and shrinking public services.
Another significant share of public borrowing has been used for bank recapitalisation, effectively socialising the losses of reckless corporate lending. Over the years, public money has repeatedly been deployed to clean up the balance sheets of banks burdened by non-performing assets created by politically connected corporate borrowers. Meanwhile, small farmers, MSMEs, and self-employed workers face relentless credit stress, harassment, and insolvency. Losses are collectivised; profits remain private.
Compounding this problem is the systematic weakening of India’s tax base. The 2019 corporate tax cuts reduced government revenue by an estimated ₹1.5 lakh crore annually, with no corresponding investment boom or job creation. Wealth taxes and inheritance taxes have become ideological taboos. Instead, the state increasingly relies on indirect taxes such as GST, which disproportionately burden the poor and middle classes. Fuel taxes remain high even as household consumption weakens. India today is among the most unequal societies in the world, yet the super-rich contribute remarkably little relative to their wealth.
Debt, in this context, becomes a tool of regressive redistribution: borrowed in the name of national development, but repaid by ordinary citizens through inflation, consumption taxes, subsidy cuts, and shrinking public services. The poor pay twice – first through exclusion, then through repayment.
Equally troubling is how this debt expansion has been politically normalised through nationalist rhetoric. Economic critique is dismissed as “anti-national.” Questions about fiscal prudence are drowned out by manufactured spectacles – temple inaugurations, foreign-policy theatrics, and perpetual electioneering. Economic governance has been replaced by optics, and accountability has been replaced by applause.
The long-term consequences are serious. Interest payments now consume a substantial share of government expenditure, crowding out spending on health, education, nutrition, and social protection. Rising debt limits the ability of future governments to respond to crises—whether pandemics, climate disasters, or global financial shocks. Entire generations are being saddled with obligations they did not consent to, without any assurance of a more just, resilient, or productive economy.
What makes this trajectory especially dangerous is the convergence of economic centralisation and political authoritarianism. As debt rises, democratic accountability shrinks. Parliament is marginalised. Data transparency has eroded. Independent institutions are weakened. Economic decision-making has become opaque, concentrated in a small executive circle aligned with corporate power.
Ache Din, it turns out, was never meant for everyone.
This is not an argument against borrowing per se. It is an argument against borrowing without justice, growth without employment, and development without dignity. A genuinely responsible economic policy would combine fiscal prudence with progressive taxation, invest seriously in human development, strengthen labour rights, and democratise economic decision-making.
India does not suffer from a lack of resources. It suffers from a lack of political will to redistribute them fairly.
From ₹34 lakh crore to ₹172 lakh crore, the numbers tell a story no slogan can hide. The question is no longer whether Ache Din arrived – but for whom?
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Ranjan Solomon is a writer, researcher and activist based in Goa. He has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age. The views expressed here are the author’s own and Clarion India does not necessarily share or subscribe to them. He can be contacted at ranjan.solomon@gmail.com
