At the best of times economic statistics conceal more than they reveal, and the figures can so easily be juggled to “suit” the picture those in authority seek to project. While the experts intensively debate the factors leading to a decline in the growth of GDP they all have had to concede what North Block refused to admit ~ demonetisation had a negative impact on the economy. The prime casualty of the new figures is the argument that the electoral fire-storm in UP sufficed to burn out all criticism of the “note ban” misadventure. That critical sectors of the economy slowed down in the closing quarter of the last financial year (when the effects of demonetisation took full effect) shows up officials of the various wings of the finance ministry in unfavourable light ~ they had worked overtime to endorse the political line. In much the same way that their forebears had tried to “sell” the 20- point progarmme in 1975-76.

For the NDA-II the timing of the release of the new GDP figures could not have been more inopportune: it came when the Modi government was in the process of a publicity blitzkrieg to mark its third anniversary, and erect a platform for the 2019 polls. By now some of this government’s slogans should have been yielding results on the ground: only those with saffron-tinted perspectives are “seeing” success.

The showpiece of the anniversary festivity ~ the strategic bridge in Arunachal ~ was a project conceived long before Mr Narendra Modi re-located from Gandhinagar to Lutyens’ imperial city. Although the upcoming introduction of the Goods & Services Tax is being hailed as an economic miracle, it too is not a Modi-Jaitley “original”. Projects like “Make in India” and “Skilled India” have been little more than showboating.

Yet the negatives are real, painful. The underhanded attempt to prohibit the eating of bovine flesh has split society wide open: it has brought Opposition parties to a common stage more forcefully than demonetisation, with a possible spin-off on the Presidential election. While the government ought to have been “celebrating” with a chief ministers’ conclave, the beef ban has proved the glue. The “muscle” that the government so favours has proved counter-productive in the Kashmir Valley, the Army is struggling to tackle stone-pelters, the fate of the first government in the state in which the BJP has a say is hanging by a thread. Things in the Maoist belt are as bad as ever. And on his latest multi-national trip the Prime Minister has not attracted the choreographed crowds of yesteryear. The government, however, has few causes for alarm: its main source of sustenance being the Opposition’s cowardice in looking for a rallyingpoint more magnetic than Rahul Gandhi.