Economists agree that to become a middle-income country, India needs its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to grow over 10 per cent, so that hundreds of millions of people are lifted out of poverty as happened in China (the World Bank says China's poverty rate was 88 per cent in 1981 and came down to 6.5 per cent in 2012). Despite the economic reforms by Atal Behari Vajpayee's government and the consolidation during Manmohan Singh's first term, India's GDP growth had not hit double digits.

Narendra Modi, always looking for self-burnishing, changed the base year of GDP growth calculation; and while his economic management has not produced double-digit growth — it hovers stubbornly around seven per cent — it has made the UPA look good, with double-digit growth of 10.08 per cent in 2006-07. We can argue endlessly about why growth stumbled during the UPA years — was it the 2008 global economic crisis and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's inept response; or was it Congress president Sonia Gandhi's electoral compulsions to spur consumption by reducing excise rates and waiving farmers' debt of R60,000 crore which led to unsustainable fiscal deficit expansion — but one thing is clear: Dr Manmohan Singh looks a whole lot better than when Modi pushed him out of office.