The beard is shorter, but the list of promises is growing: on Sunday, the 75th Indian Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared in his traditional orange turban.
He promised his compatriots billions of dollars more to build the third largest economy in Asia, as if there were neither budget nor a gap in it.
Nobody was really impressed anymore - for one thing, Modi broke at least as many of his promises as he made.
On the other hand, they cannot be kept up in any way: This time it is about the incredible sum of investments over 100 trillion rupees (1.14 trillion euros) with no time specification or source for the money and a “National Hydrogen Mission” that will run until 2046 for energy independence should worry - then Modi would be 95 years old.
Christoph Hein
Business correspondent for South Asia / Pacific based in Singapore.
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The money will help to make Indian industry “globally competitive” and to build up “future economic zones,” said Modi at the Red Fort in New Delhi.
Last year he had promised 110 trillion rupees at the same place, in 2019 it should be 100 trillion for "public contracts".
The Olympic Games medal winners returning from Tokyo were delighted that the road to their village was finally paved in their honor.
The stock market does not allow itself to be carried away by the booming words. She knows her modes. On Monday, the Sensex index on the Bombay (Mumbai) stock exchange gained only 0.25 percent. However, he had not let himself be pulled down by the deadly corona wave in early summer. Shareholder confidence in the growth market of 1.4 billion Indians is enormous, and it seems little affected by the announcements or government failures. However, it could become more risky if the rising rate of inflation forces the central bank to raise interest rates; especially since the banks are still hoping for a political solution to their accumulated bad loans.
Just last week, Modi set a $ 400 billion export target for India for this fiscal year (March 31st). Last year, the value had melted by 7.2 percent to only 290.6 billion dollars. India needs little more than industrial production and jobs - a good 12 million young people grow into the labor market every year. On Sunday, however, Modi only spoke of wanting to create "hundreds of thousands of new jobs".
Many of them are not created by Modi and his government, but rather by the digital industry. And often in spite of the government, sometimes against it. The unicorns - startups with a market value of more than a billion dollars - are galloping in the growth market. The delivery app Zomato just went public in Bombay for $ 1.3 billion. The payment app Paytm is planning the largest IPO on the subcontinent for around 2.2 billion dollars. Flipkart Online received another $ 3.6 billion from investors and is growing into a $ 40 billion corporation. All of these IPOs are big opportunities for shareholders, at least if they're quick.
India is helping Beijing crack down on its highly rated tech giants at the same time. India is hurting that there is still fear in the market that the country and its laws - some of them even geared towards the past - would damage business activity. At least in its “monsoon session” that has just ended, parliament has finally rejected the dreaded backward taxation of companies.
The Supreme Court also strengthened investor Amazon against Modi-speci and multi-billionaire Mukesh Ambani. In turn, the main occupation helmsman of the huge conglomerate Reliance Industries, recently announced that he would be investing on a large scale in the production of solar panels, battery cells and a network for electric charging stations. Its solar cells are expected to provide 100 gigawatts of capacity by 2030. Ambani is not afraid of contact. When it became clear on Monday that world market leader Saudi Aramco wanted to get into Reliance's oil refineries, its shares rose almost 3 percent. If you want to bet on India's rise despite or thanks to Modi, Reliance covers the whole country.