GDP Has Fizz, Congress Has Beer, Jobs Have Gone Missing
Modi celebrated the number, Congress mocked the method, and Kiren Rijiju diagnosed the opposition instead of answering it.
India’s GDP grew 7.8 per cent in the April–June quarter of 2026–27. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it a “herculean feat”, which is the sort of phrase normally reserved for lifting an economy, not lifting a quarterly press release into national mythology. The Centre has a number, a slogan and presumably a suitably patriotic background score ready for it.
Congress responded with a beer-mug graphic: the economy as liquid, the official number as fizz. Former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg questioned the comparison after revisions reportedly added about ₹6 trillion to last year’s GDP, suggesting the underlying growth could look closer to 2.6 per cent under another calculation. That is a legitimate argument about the method. It may be right, wrong or somewhere in the statistical swamp where every political party goes when the spreadsheet becomes inconvenient.
Kiren Rijiju, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister, chose the traditional governing shortcut. Instead of taking apart the methodology, he asked whether Congress was in a state of “deep intoxication due to drinking too much beer” and accused it of “blind loathing of India’s growth”. The minister has now contributed a new school of macroeconomics: if the number is challenged, examine the challenger’s beverage history. Somewhere, a national income accountant is quietly asking for a calculator and an adult.
Congress, meanwhile, is happy to puncture the headline without necessarily presenting a clear account of what growth should mean for households. Both sides have discovered the perfect political economy. The government gets to celebrate GDP; the opposition gets to mock GDP; ordinary people get to continue testing growth against wages, jobs, prices, investment and the monthly grocery bill. Telangana knows the arrangement well. Hyderabad helps power the services and technology story, while states are left to manage urban pressure, employment quality and finances beneath the national fireworks. The Centre wants the fizz credited to India and the liquid located elsewhere.
India’s GDP produced 7.8 per cent; the political system produced no job figure worth celebrating.
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