India's economy and BJP's ambitious political thrust on divergent tracks

The ruling party may have assumed the economy will revive on its own before next elections, but such facile belief can come unstuck if current directions are not reversed quickly, writes T N Ninan

The starkly divergent tracks being followed by the economy and the ruling party’s ambitious political thrust is too obvious to be ignored. From the start of the Narendra Modi government’s first term, it has been evident that for the government politics trumps the economy — and this despite Mr Modi’s message on the stump in 2014. Today the dichotomy is all the more evident: The economy is less important than re-writing the basic rules of political engagement by giving effect to the Sangh Parivar’s long-held shibboleths, for which you could argue that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won an