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India’s economy grew by 7.8% in the three months to June, defying an oil shock, fuel rationing elsewhere in Asia and forecasts of a much weaker result. The figure appears broadly credible: car sales, lending and electricity use all point to genuine expansion. Yet the government’s celebration has provoked suspicion rather than enthusiasm.

The problem is not simply whether the latest calculation is right. It is that years of weakening official statistics and a widening gap between national growth and everyday experience have made many Indians unwilling to trust a triumphant headline. Strong GDP can make a government look successful without making citizens feel that the country works for them.

A credibility problem of the government’s own making

Critics accused officials of inflating the result by revising the previous year’s output downward, thereby creating an easier comparison. That argument is misleading because India recently changed how it calculates GDP, so the old and new figures cannot be compared directly. Other economic indicators also support the conclusion that growth was robust.

But the charge landed because Narendra Modi’s government has spent years damaging confidence in public data. The census is five years late. Unflattering datasets have been withheld on methodological grounds, and established surveys have quietly lost parts of their questionnaires. Recent efforts to improve official statistics are welcome, but credibility lost over a decade cannot be restored by one defensible growth report.

This distinction matters. A statistic can be accurate while the institution publishing it is distrusted. By treating inconvenient evidence as a political problem, the government has made even good economic news vulnerable to conspiracy and partisan argument.

Growth that people cannot see

The deeper difficulty is that the 7.8% headline does not match the country many Indians encounter. Delhi has suffered deadly building failures, slow public emergency responses, flooding and recurring toxic air. Violent incidents and apparent impunity feed a broader sense of disorder. At the same time, leaked public-service exams, a weaker private-sector job market and AI’s effect on software work have made the traditional routes to a better life feel less reliable.

That does not mean growth is imaginary. It means output is rising faster than institutional quality, public services and economic security. Macroeconomic performance can coexist with fragile infrastructure and frustrated workers, especially when gains are uneven or fail to translate into visible improvements.

The political warning comes from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2004 campaign. Then, too, leaders celebrated rapid growth with the slogan “India Shining” while many voters felt excluded from the progress on display. The party suffered an unexpected defeat and remained out of power for a decade.

India’s current economy deserves more credit than its loudest sceptics allow. But the government’s boastfulness mistakes a national accounting result for a public mood. Durable confidence will require not only continued growth, but trustworthy data, functioning institutions and improvements that citizens can recognize in their own lives.