# Unpacking the GDP controversy, Muslim voters targeted, and Haryana workers' strike

An episode of [3 Things](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1406730235), 4 Sep 2026, 31 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74878571/3_things_2026_september_4_v2.mp3

First, we speak to The Indian Express’ Udit Misra about the controversy surrounding India’s latest GDP figures, how the reported 7.8% real growth was calculated, and whether former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg’s criticism of the data is justified. Next, we speak to The Indian Express’ Shubham Tigga about an investigation that found BJP booth-level agents seeking the deletion of voters from electoral rolls in Jharkhand’s Godda district, many of them Muslims and migrant workers, and the concerns this has raised during the revision exercise. And in the end, we look at the month-long strike by sanitation workers in Haryana, why regularisation remains the central point of disagreement, and how the agitation has become politically sensitive for the BJP because of the workforce’s links to the Valmiki community. Hosted by Ichha Sharma Produced and written by Shashank Bhargava and Ichha Sharma Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Teachers are at the heart of foundational learning. Their role
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[0:45] Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Itchha Sharma and you're listening to Three Things,
[0:48] Speaker 2: the Indian Express news show. In today's episode, we look
[0:56] Speaker 2: at Jharkhand where an Indian Express investigation found BJP booth-level
[1:01] Speaker 2: agents seeking the deletion of dozens of voters from electoral rolls,
[1:06] Speaker 2: many of them Muslims and migrant workers. We also take
[1:09] Speaker 2: a look at Haryana where a month-long sanitation worker strike
[1:13] Speaker 2: has become a political challenge for the BJP government. But
[1:17] Speaker 2: we begin today by talking about the controversy surrounding India's
[1:21] Speaker 2: latest GDP figures. Earlier this week on Monday, the Statistics
[1:26] Speaker 2: Ministry released the latest figures on India's economic growth. According
[1:30] Speaker 2: to the data, India's GDP grew by 7.8% in the
[1:35] Speaker 2: April-June quarter, despite the challenges posed by the conflict in
[1:39] Speaker 2: West Asia, high energy prices and supply disruptions. The figure
[1:44] Speaker 2: was also significantly higher than the Reserve Bank of India's
[1:47] Speaker 2: forecast of 7%, which was made earlier this year. Reacting
[1:52] Speaker 2: to the numbers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the growth
[1:56] Speaker 2: as a Herculean feat, while Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said
[2:00] Speaker 2: the government's reforms and its agile management of the economy
[2:05] Speaker 2: were bearing results. But the figure has since come under scrutiny,
[2:09] Speaker 2: particularly after former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg claimed in
[2:13] Speaker 2: a TV interview that the nominal GDP growth during this
[2:17] Speaker 2: period should have been 2.6%. and in real terms, close
[2:21] Speaker 2: to zero. Garg's criticism was widely circulated online, and was
[2:26] Speaker 2: also endorsed by several opposition politicians, political parties, and economists.
[2:31] Speaker 2: In fact, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation later
[2:34] Speaker 2: even issued a six-point rebuttal defending its calculation. Now, Garg's
[2:39] Speaker 2: criticism has brought renewed attention to concerns about the credibility
[2:44] Speaker 2: of India's economic data, concerns that have been raised for
[2:47] Speaker 2: some time. But Is his criticism actually justified? To understand this,
[2:53] Speaker 2: my colleague Shashank Bhargav speaks to the Indian Express's Udit Misra,
[2:57] Speaker 2: who writes about the economy for the newspaper.
[2:59] Speaker 3: Udit, tell us, why aren't people believing this number? When
[3:03] Speaker 3: we talk about 7.8% year-on-year growth in the April-July quarter,
[3:09] Speaker 3: why does that sound unbelievable to so many people?
[3:14] Speaker 4: So, Shashank, this is a combination of factors. It has
[3:19] Speaker 4: to do with the current polarization in the country on
[3:23] Speaker 4: political lines. It has to do with the economic illiteracy,
[3:28] Speaker 4: not understanding how GDP data is to be calculated. And
[3:32] Speaker 4: in this instance, it also has to do in a
[3:35] Speaker 4: large part with the fact that Mr. Garg is a
[3:38] Speaker 4: former finance secretary. If what he has said was said
[3:42] Speaker 4: by somebody other than somebody who was a former finance secretary,
[3:46] Speaker 4: then it would have been dismissed out of hand. But
[3:49] Speaker 4: given the fact that he's a former finance secretary and
[3:51] Speaker 4: finance secretary is the person who's the senior most secretary
[3:55] Speaker 4: for finance ministry. And he comes from a position which
[3:59] Speaker 4: is very responsible and he has worked in the same government.
[4:03] Speaker 4: And that is why all of these factors have come together.
[4:07] Speaker 4: And not to mention the fact that India has had
[4:10] Speaker 4: a long standing debate on GDP robustness. whether our GDP
[4:14] Speaker 4: data is correct or not. So there's a long history
[4:17] Speaker 4: to it. But in particular, the polarization, the bit that
[4:22] Speaker 4: we don't actually understand how GDP is calculated, and the
[4:25] Speaker 4: fact that the person making the comment is a very
[4:28] Speaker 4: senior government functionary or was a senior government functionary.
[4:32] Speaker 3: Okay, so break this down for us. What does the 7.8
[4:35] Speaker 3: figure mean? How did they arrive at this figure?
[4:39] Speaker 4: Okay, so 7.8% growth rate that is talked about and
[4:42] Speaker 4: commonly referred to is the real GDP growth rate. The
[4:46] Speaker 4: growth rate in real GDP. To understand real GDP, we
[4:49] Speaker 4: need to first understand what is nominal GDP. Because nominal
[4:53] Speaker 4: GDP is the observed variable. Let me explain this through example.
[4:58] Speaker 4: Suppose we make cars and we produce wheat. from one
[5:04] Speaker 4: year to another, and they have their own prices, car
[5:07] Speaker 4: prices and wheat prices. Now, it is possible that, you know,
[5:12] Speaker 4: you make 100 cars and 100 kgs of wheat. And
[5:16] Speaker 4: next year, even though your total productivity has not gone up,
[5:20] Speaker 4: you have not produced another single car or another additional
[5:24] Speaker 4: kg of wheat, the prices have gone up. Suppose they've doubled,
[5:27] Speaker 4: your nominal GDP will go up to two times, it
[5:31] Speaker 4: will become double. So that is the nominal GDP, whatever
[5:35] Speaker 4: is visible to us in actual current day prices, then
[5:40] Speaker 4: there is something that is called real GDP, because you're
[5:43] Speaker 4: trying to understand that, did I produce more cars? Did
[5:47] Speaker 4: I produce more wheat? So to do that, you take
[5:50] Speaker 4: away the effect of prices, right? And then you get
[5:53] Speaker 4: to know what is real GDP. How much did you
[5:56] Speaker 4: produce more? What is the value of what you produced more?
[6:00] Speaker 4: Real GDP essentially then tells you whether your economy is
[6:04] Speaker 4: doing better because it's genuinely producing more or is it
[6:08] Speaker 4: because just the prices have gone up?
[6:10] Speaker 3: Yeah, and prices going up is not necessarily a good thing,
[6:14] Speaker 3: especially by that much. Yes.
[6:16] Speaker 4: So, I mean, the idea is to know both nominal
[6:19] Speaker 4: GDP and real GDP.
[6:21] Speaker 5: Nominal is what you observe.
[6:23] Speaker 4: Real GDP is what you calculate by taking away the
[6:26] Speaker 4: effect of prices. And which is where a lot of
[6:28] Speaker 4: confusion has happened in the past. How much prices to
[6:31] Speaker 4: take away?
[6:31] Speaker 5: You know, what is the effect of prices?
[6:33] Speaker 3: Right.
[6:34] Speaker 4: Now, when we say seven point eight percent. It's the
[6:37] Speaker 4: growth in real GDP. 10.3 is the growth in the
[6:40] Speaker 4: nominal GDP. The gap between them is the effect of prices,
[6:44] Speaker 4: which is 2.5. So you're saying if you look at
[6:47] Speaker 4: the GDP data, you would deduce that the effect of
[6:51] Speaker 4: prices in that quarter in the April, May, June quarter
[6:55] Speaker 4: was 2.5%. Now, one reason why a lot of people
[6:59] Speaker 4: are unhappy or not willing to accept this is that
[7:02] Speaker 4: for them, prices may have gone up more, far more
[7:05] Speaker 4: than 2.5%. the prices they face. You know, for example,
[7:09] Speaker 4: consumer price inflation, government's official data shows that it's higher.
[7:13] Speaker 4: It's around 4.3. Wholesale price inflation is almost 9%. So
[7:18] Speaker 4: people can genuinely ask, how is it that all the
[7:21] Speaker 4: inflation that we see is much higher, but the one
[7:24] Speaker 4: that you use to deflate from nominal to real is
[7:27] Speaker 4: is so much smaller inflation. If you had a higher
[7:30] Speaker 4: inflation rate, then your real GDP growth will not be 7.8.
[7:33] Speaker 4: It would be much lower because you would have accepted
[7:36] Speaker 4: that prices had a bigger part to play.
[7:38] Speaker 5: So that is one part of the problem.
[7:41] Speaker 3: And so isn't there a standard data set that we
[7:43] Speaker 3: can look at when calculating real GDP, especially when we
[7:47] Speaker 3: are looking at inflation? Aren't there traditional sort of metrics
[7:52] Speaker 3: that we can look at?
[7:54] Speaker 4: So when you are estimating GDP, it becomes very complicated
[7:58] Speaker 4: to estimate GDP for the whole country. So you will
[8:02] Speaker 4: use some proxies, you know. And it is possible that
[8:05] Speaker 4: wages may have gone up somewhere more and somewhere less.
[8:08] Speaker 4: Diesel may have gone up more somewhere and somewhere less,
[8:11] Speaker 4: you know. Or the prices on which you sold your products,
[8:15] Speaker 4: say wheat or milk, might have been higher or lower.
[8:19] Speaker 4: So now when we think about GDP, it gives you
[8:21] Speaker 4: a neat number. But the truth is that behind that
[8:24] Speaker 4: neat number, there's a lot of assumptions, lot of extrapolations
[8:29] Speaker 4: that are done.
[8:30] Speaker 5: To arrive at that neat number, right?
[8:32] Speaker 4: And the hope is that we'll do a best job
[8:35] Speaker 4: of whatever we can from the data.
[8:38] Speaker 5: We are trying to improve as a country in.
[8:41] Speaker 4: Terms of data collection because there have been a lot
[8:43] Speaker 4: of question marks on India's data collection in the recent past.
[8:46] Speaker 4: For example, as I mentioned, wholesale price index being higher. Now,
[8:50] Speaker 4: what proportion of wholesale price index should you take and
[8:53] Speaker 4: how much of retail price inflation should you take to
[8:56] Speaker 4: deflate the overall GDP? It's a very complicated thing. So
[9:02] Speaker 4: there are genuine problems with how you estimate data. And
[9:06] Speaker 4: that is why we keep talking about estimates, you know,
[9:09] Speaker 4: and that is why they are revised repeatedly. So it
[9:11] Speaker 4: gets very complicated very fast when you get into GDP estimation.
[9:16] Speaker 4: And the hope is to have clearer price indices, clearer,
[9:21] Speaker 4: better quality data. But you will never have like an
[9:24] Speaker 4: exact data in an economy like India because we are
[9:27] Speaker 4: such an informal economy.
[9:28] Speaker 5: It's a wide range. big economy. So yeah, that's some
[9:31] Speaker 5: part of the problem.
[9:33] Speaker 3: Okay, so let's put this calculation aside. What this 7.8
[9:38] Speaker 3: figure is saying is that, look, this growth happened in
[9:42] Speaker 3: real terms without counting for inflation. Now, if this growth
[9:46] Speaker 3: has in fact happened, it would show up somewhere, right?
[9:50] Speaker 3: So tell us where has this growth taken place? Which
[9:54] Speaker 3: are the sectors that have produced these goods and services?
[9:58] Speaker 4: So, in a piece that I wrote at the start
[10:00] Speaker 4: of the week and last week it got was there
[10:02] Speaker 4: on the online, I explained what are the reasons why
[10:05] Speaker 4: everybody expected India's GDP to go up by 7.8% precisely
[10:10] Speaker 4: in this quarter. Then at the start of the quarter,
[10:12] Speaker 4: we were in the midst of the US Iran war
[10:14] Speaker 4: and everybody was dialing down expectations. It's because as the
[10:18] Speaker 4: quarter went on and you looked at all different sets
[10:21] Speaker 4: of data, which finally get accumulated into the GDP, you
[10:24] Speaker 4: found that the economy was not doing as bad. And
[10:27] Speaker 4: what were those things or what were those reasons? For example,
[10:30] Speaker 4: manufacturing did better. You know, why did people manufacture? manufacture
[10:33] Speaker 4: more when they were running into a crisis because they
[10:36] Speaker 4: thought let's manufacture, you know, it's called front loading. They
[10:39] Speaker 4: decided let's manufacture first right now when we have the
[10:42] Speaker 4: energy before we run out of all energy.
[10:45] Speaker 5: Sources, you know.
[10:46] Speaker 4: So sometimes you can think, suppose you and I were
[10:49] Speaker 4: running a company, we might get together and decide, okay,
[10:52] Speaker 4: we typically make only 50 pans in a month, but
[10:56] Speaker 4: you know, next month we may not have any energy.
[10:58] Speaker 4: or the prices for other commodities may go up. Let's
[11:01] Speaker 4: make 100 pans in this month because we may not
[11:04] Speaker 4: have the resources to make 50 pans next month. So
[11:07] Speaker 4: you've front loaded your production, right? That does not necessarily,
[11:10] Speaker 4: now that shows up in GDP because you've made more, right?
[11:14] Speaker 4: That may not necessarily show up in say consumption. It
[11:17] Speaker 4: may not necessarily have.
[11:18] Speaker 5: Been sold, right?
[11:20] Speaker 4: And this may also have repercussions for future quarters because
[11:23] Speaker 4: you've made 50 additional and next month you didn't have
[11:27] Speaker 4: the problem that you thought you would have. Now you're
[11:29] Speaker 4: saddled with a higher inventory. So you will perhaps slow
[11:33] Speaker 4: down at a gradual pace in the coming months.
[11:36] Speaker 3: Right. You'll compensate for it.
[11:37] Speaker 5: You'll compensate for it. So manufacturing was one thing.
[11:40] Speaker 4: You know, the capital on the demand side, the stellar
[11:44] Speaker 4: number that has come out is investments that the government
[11:48] Speaker 4: is saying that a lot of investments have happened. Again,
[11:50] Speaker 4: it's a good thing that investments have happened, but maybe
[11:53] Speaker 4: they happened because people realized that, you know, this was
[11:56] Speaker 4: the time to invest. Otherwise, they may not have the
[11:58] Speaker 4: opportunity to invest later on. They may not have the resources,
[12:00] Speaker 4: the physical energy resources to invest. So Many of these
[12:04] Speaker 4: things were there and there were other factors like last
[12:07] Speaker 4: year we had the GST tax cut, you know, that
[12:10] Speaker 4: left more money in people's pocket. We have had a
[12:13] Speaker 4: 125 basis point or 1.25 percentage.
[12:15] Speaker 5: Cut in the repo rate. And that takes its time.
[12:20] Speaker 4: You know, suppose you were thinking of buying a car
[12:23] Speaker 4: or I was thinking buying a house and then the
[12:25] Speaker 4: interest rates came down and the EMI became more doable.
[12:30] Speaker 4: It may take us a month or two, maybe a
[12:32] Speaker 4: quarter to finally go ahead for that purchase. So many
[12:35] Speaker 4: factors that contributed to a better than initialization.
[12:38] Speaker 5: Expected growth.
[12:40] Speaker 4: But the 7.8 number was, you know, slightly better than
[12:43] Speaker 4: what most people expected, but many expected it to be
[12:46] Speaker 4: exactly 7.8. So it was quite spot on in many ways.
[12:50] Speaker 3: Okay, so if that's the case, why this criticism from
[12:53] Speaker 3: Subhash Garg? You know, he's saying that the nominal GDP
[12:57] Speaker 3: growth in this period should have been 2.6% and in
[13:01] Speaker 3: real terms, close to zero. What exactly is his reasoning?
[13:07] Speaker 4: So Subhash Garg, you know, it is completely befuddling how
[13:11] Speaker 4: he has made that claim. And considering that he was
[13:15] Speaker 4: the finance secretary, it seems difficult that he would not
[13:18] Speaker 4: know the intricacies of how calculations growth rates are calculated.
[13:23] Speaker 4: So possibly the reasons are nothing to do with economic
[13:26] Speaker 4: understanding in his case. And let's not speculate what might
[13:29] Speaker 4: be the reasons. But what he has done is that
[13:32] Speaker 4: in February, we as a country shifted our base year
[13:36] Speaker 4: for GDP calculations from 2011-12.
[13:40] Speaker 5: It's a long pending base year revision.
[13:42] Speaker 4: Every five years, it should happen, but it had not
[13:44] Speaker 4: happened for almost 10-12 years. And as a result, when
[13:48] Speaker 4: you do not revise base years, what happens is that
[13:50] Speaker 4: your data gets worse and worse.
[13:52] Speaker 5: You go away from the reality.
[13:54] Speaker 4: Imagine somebody saying eating patterns or purchase patterns 10 years
[13:59] Speaker 4: ago are very different from what they are now. So
[14:02] Speaker 4: assessing the economy based on what it was in 2011-12
[14:06] Speaker 4: is very different from what it is now. And the
[14:09] Speaker 4: base year was revised to 2022-23. And when we did that,
[14:12] Speaker 4: the official data showed that we had to revise down
[14:15] Speaker 4: our GDP, absolute amount of GDP. So it was a
[14:18] Speaker 4: very remarkable thing that India, in the midst of all
[14:22] Speaker 4: the polarization and the fact that opposition and many critics
[14:26] Speaker 4: say that government was overestimating, the government did accept that
[14:29] Speaker 4: it was overestimating. It may not accept that it was
[14:32] Speaker 4: overestimating to the extent to which many of the critics
[14:35] Speaker 4: might claim. But it was accepted that, yes, the old
[14:38] Speaker 4: series was overestimating. And to that extent, GDP was brought down.
[14:42] Speaker 4: And this fact was known on February 27th.
[14:47] Speaker 3: Right in that time, the US had not invaded Iran.
[14:50] Speaker 3: That actually happened the next day.
[14:53] Speaker 5: Yes.
[14:53] Speaker 4: So at that time, the number for last year's Q1,
[15:00] Speaker 4: the same quarter that we are talking about for GDP
[15:02] Speaker 4: was 80.3 trillion rupees. You know, trillion is lakh crores.
[15:08] Speaker 4: So 80.3 trillion rupees. This was known on February 27th, right?
[15:12] Speaker 5: What Mr.
[15:13] Speaker 4: Garg has implied in many ways is that he seems
[15:16] Speaker 4: to suggest that the government perhaps looked at the quarterly.
[15:20] Speaker 5: GDP at the end of June and then went back and.
[15:23] Speaker 4: Fudged the books, you know, rubbed whatever was the GDP
[15:27] Speaker 4: in the past and then put a lower number to
[15:29] Speaker 4: show the gap and show a growth rate.
[15:31] Speaker 5: That is not the case.
[15:32] Speaker 4: 80.3 trillion rupees was the GDP known for the first
[15:37] Speaker 4: quarter of last year on February 27th. And roughly, it's
[15:41] Speaker 4: the same GDP that we are using now. And the
[15:43] Speaker 4: growth is calculated over that number. Now, what he has
[15:46] Speaker 4: done is that there was a GDP.
[15:48] Speaker 5: Number in the old series also, right? Which was overestimating.
[15:51] Speaker 4: And that number for that quarter, for the first quarter
[15:54] Speaker 4: of last year, was around 86 trillion. His whole argument
[15:57] Speaker 4: is that if we calculate... The GDP in the current
[16:01] Speaker 4: year's quarter, which is 88 over 86 trillion, which is
[16:05] Speaker 4: in the different series, you know, data series, which is
[16:08] Speaker 4: not comparable. Then the growth rate turns out to be 2.6.
[16:13] Speaker 4: And then if you this is nominal GDP and if
[16:16] Speaker 4: you then remove the 2.6 percent inflation, then it will
[16:19] Speaker 4: be zero growth.
[16:20] Speaker 5: All of that follows.
[16:22] Speaker 3: But why look at the old series when we have
[16:25] Speaker 3: revised it?
[16:26] Speaker 5: Precisely.
[16:27] Speaker 4: Now, this is precisely, it is so fundamentally flawed, this
[16:32] Speaker 4: whole argument. When you shift one base year to another
[16:35] Speaker 4: base year, the data is not comparable. What happens typically
[16:39] Speaker 4: is that the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, whenever
[16:43] Speaker 4: it comes out with a new base year, In some time,
[16:45] Speaker 4: and it will happen again in a few months time,
[16:48] Speaker 4: it will release the back series of GDP, which is
[16:51] Speaker 4: to say that this is the new way of calculating GDP,
[16:54] Speaker 4: new sources, new methodology. You know, now we will use
[16:57] Speaker 4: this to back calculate GDP for past years.
[17:00] Speaker 5: Right.
[17:01] Speaker 4: And then that will give you some kind of a
[17:02] Speaker 4: comparable number. But what you cannot do is to look
[17:05] Speaker 4: at the GDP for any particular quarter or any particular period,
[17:08] Speaker 4: any particular year in two different series.
[17:11] Speaker 5: Right.
[17:12] Speaker 4: With fundamentally different ways to calculate or substantially different ways
[17:16] Speaker 4: to calculate different sources of data.
[17:19] Speaker 5: And then compare and say, you know, the growth rate
[17:22] Speaker 5: is wrong.
[17:22] Speaker 4: That is absolutely not done. And it is not even
[17:25] Speaker 4: a nuanced point. It is such a fundamental thing that
[17:28] Speaker 4: it is difficult to believe that a former finance secretary
[17:31] Speaker 4: would not know this. Now, as regards why was the
[17:34] Speaker 4: data revised downwards when the base year revision happened, that's
[17:38] Speaker 4: a separate debate altogether. But what he has done is
[17:42] Speaker 4: patently incorrect. And I would suspect that he has done
[17:46] Speaker 4: grievous harm to anybody who was genuinely interested in improving
[17:50] Speaker 4: India's statistical data quality because he has undermined the credibility
[17:56] Speaker 4: of any criticism by doing this.
[17:58] Speaker 3: And Udit, a lot of the growth that this 7.8
[18:01] Speaker 3: figure shows, that was based on how people were responding
[18:05] Speaker 3: to this West Asia crisis. Like you said, increasing manufacturing,
[18:10] Speaker 3: thinking they might not be able to do it in
[18:13] Speaker 3: the near future. So considering that, how significant is this figure?
[18:18] Speaker 3: Is it an anomaly in that sense? Could we expect
[18:21] Speaker 3: the future numbers to be lower? How do you see
[18:24] Speaker 3: this figure?
[18:25] Speaker 4: So it would appear that in the coming quarters, the
[18:28] Speaker 4: growth will slow down from here. Primarily, as I explained
[18:32] Speaker 4: that many times you tend to front load either your
[18:36] Speaker 4: production or your expenditure because you anticipate that times might
[18:39] Speaker 4: be tougher. And then when that doesn't happen or as
[18:42] Speaker 4: a result of that, you do not actually go ahead
[18:45] Speaker 4: and buy as many things in the next quarters or
[18:47] Speaker 4: produce as many things in the next quarter. The other
[18:50] Speaker 4: element is also that the war has not got over.
[18:53] Speaker 4: The transmission of higher prices also takes time. It doesn't
[18:58] Speaker 4: happen that just because price went up on day one
[19:02] Speaker 4: of the war, that gets translated into price going up
[19:05] Speaker 4: on the pump here or other commodities becoming costly. It
[19:09] Speaker 4: takes some time. The other elements are that India's economy,
[19:14] Speaker 4: while the West Asia crisis or the war there is
[19:18] Speaker 4: a very significant element. There are other factors that affect
[19:21] Speaker 4: our economy. There are genuine weaknesses in our economy, which
[19:24] Speaker 4: got exposed because of the West Asia crisis. For example,
[19:28] Speaker 4: how many people are investing in India, what is happening
[19:31] Speaker 4: to manufacturing in general, employment, incomes being stagnant, all of
[19:35] Speaker 4: those issues. Add to that very, you know, local issues
[19:39] Speaker 4: like El Nino, monsoon production, all of those. So it's
[19:43] Speaker 4: not just West Asia that will determine. Other factors will
[19:47] Speaker 4: also come into play and is difficult to sit here
[19:50] Speaker 4: and decide what exactly will happen but most estimates again
[19:53] Speaker 4: suggest that from the dire expectations at the start of
[19:56] Speaker 4: the financial year things might be better but they may
[19:59] Speaker 4: not be as rosy as the 7.8 might suggest But again,
[20:03] Speaker 4: one should hold one's horses on this because, you know,
[20:06] Speaker 4: these are quarterly GDP data. Typically, a lot of revisions
[20:10] Speaker 4: happen and justifiably because data keeps coming up. So one
[20:13] Speaker 4: should not just draw all kinds of conclusions just based
[20:16] Speaker 4: on a quarterly GDP data.
[20:22] Speaker 2: And next, we shift our attention to the state of Jharkhand,
[20:26] Speaker 2: which is currently undergoing the special intensive revision of its
[20:29] Speaker 2: electoral rolls. This exercise, which began on 30 June, with
[20:34] Speaker 2: a draft list published two weeks later, saw 16.48% of voters,
[20:40] Speaker 2: around 43 lakh people, deleted from Jharkhand's electoral rolls. The
[20:45] Speaker 2: state is currently in the claims and objections state, essentially
[20:48] Speaker 2: the period during which people can ask for names to
[20:51] Speaker 2: be added, corrected or deleted. And during this period, an
[20:55] Speaker 2: Indian Express investigation has now found that something unusual was
[21:00] Speaker 2: happening in Goda district.
[21:03] Speaker 6: Goda is politically important because it's a political, competitive, important
[21:09] Speaker 6: area of Jharkhand.
[21:11] Speaker 2: That's the Indian Express's Shubham Tiga, who led the investigation
[21:15] Speaker 2: for the newspaper.
[21:16] Speaker 6: And You can see that from the recent election, the
[21:19] Speaker 6: last election in 2024 assembly election. So BJP's Amit Kumar
[21:24] Speaker 6: Mandal lost the Godda seat to Sanjay Prasad Yadav, who
[21:28] Speaker 6: is from RJD. And RJD is a part of JMM
[21:31] Speaker 6: Congress Alliance. And the margin was more than 20,000 votes.
[21:34] Speaker 6: So this is not really a one-sided constituency. There is
[21:37] Speaker 6: a close political contest here.
[21:40] Speaker 2: Shubham highlights that across at least four booths in the district,
[21:44] Speaker 2: BJP booth-level agents tried submitting Form 7 applications seeking the
[21:49] Speaker 2: deletion of people who were already present on the draft
[21:52] Speaker 2: electoral roll. Now, Form 7 can be used to request
[21:56] Speaker 2: deletion on grounds such as a voter being absent, shifted, dead, duplicate,
[22:03] Speaker 2: or not an Indian citizen. And what's worth noting is
[22:07] Speaker 2: that most of the names flagged in these applications belonged
[22:10] Speaker 2: to the minority community.
[22:13] Speaker 6: And when the BLOs looked at the names, they found
[22:17] Speaker 6: that most of these voters being targeted were Muslims. So
[22:21] Speaker 6: we then went and spoke to some of the voters
[22:24] Speaker 6: and many of them told us that their families had.
[22:27] Speaker 5: Been living in these villages for generations.
[22:28] Speaker 6: They are the regular voters and they were also already
[22:32] Speaker 6: mapped in 2003 electoral roll. So the These were not
[22:35] Speaker 6: people who had suddenly appeared on the voter list. And
[22:38] Speaker 6: on August 5, when the draft roll was published in
[22:41] Speaker 6: that list also, these people were present.
[22:45] Speaker 2: Shubham says that at one booth in Mahesh Dikri alone,
[22:48] Speaker 2: one BJP BLA submitted around 25 forms. And in the
[22:52] Speaker 2: neighbouring Pachuakitta, a booth-level officer said he was approached by
[22:57] Speaker 2: a BJP booth-level agent with around 75 Form 7 applications.
[23:02] Speaker 2: According to the officer... All the names on the forms
[23:05] Speaker 2: were Muslims, and most of them could be mapped to
[23:08] Speaker 2: the 2003 electoral roll. And so when he questioned the agent,
[23:13] Speaker 2: he burnt all of the forms. Meanwhile, the BJP has
[23:16] Speaker 2: rejected the charge that its agents did anything improper.
[23:22] Speaker 6: Uh bjp's explanation is basically that it's uh blas their
[23:26] Speaker 6: agents were doing what they are supposed to do they
[23:28] Speaker 6: are doing their job so like former bjp go damn
[23:31] Speaker 6: la when we spoke to him um with mandal so
[23:33] Speaker 6: mandal told the inexpress that blas are trained for this
[23:37] Speaker 6: kind of work and that if they believe someone's name
[23:40] Speaker 6: is appearing at two places they can raise an objection
[23:42] Speaker 6: through form seven so when we asked about the limit
[23:45] Speaker 6: that how many forms they can file at a time
[23:47] Speaker 6: so He said there is no prescribed limit on how
[23:49] Speaker 6: much Form 7 application a BLA can submit. So he
[23:52] Speaker 6: was giving an example about this particular booth number 9,
[23:55] Speaker 6: the village Mahesh Tikri.
[23:56] Speaker 5: He was saying if.
[23:57] Speaker 6: There are around 700 to 800 people or voters there,
[24:00] Speaker 6: so a BLA, if it thinks that these people have
[24:04] Speaker 6: duplicate entries or voting rights in two places, then they
[24:07] Speaker 6: can file the objection against them at a time.
[24:11] Speaker 2: And Shubham tells us that according to the Jharkhand Chief
[24:13] Speaker 2: Electoral Officer K. Ravi Kumar, there is nothing inherently wrong
[24:18] Speaker 2: with filing Form 7 objections in bulk, and that BLOs
[24:22] Speaker 2: should not simply refuse to accept them. In fact, the
[24:25] Speaker 2: BJP has already raised this issue with the election commission officers.
[24:30] Speaker 6: And they already submitted the complaint letter. Their argument was about, specifically,
[24:35] Speaker 6: they were talking about two districts, Godda and Sahibganj. They
[24:38] Speaker 6: have mentioned in their complaint letter that in booth number
[24:41] Speaker 6: 9 of Godda, there is a conflict between the BLOs
[24:44] Speaker 6: and BLA. BLOs are not accepting the form and not
[24:48] Speaker 6: cooperating with the BLAs. So they already raised this issue
[24:51] Speaker 6: with the election commission officials.
[24:54] Speaker 2: Now, several of the voters who were targeted were migrant workers,
[24:58] Speaker 2: which triggered them to ask, Does leaving Jharkhand for work
[25:02] Speaker 2: put your vote at risk?
[25:05] Speaker 6: So the concern in this case is that somebody might
[25:08] Speaker 6: see the fact that a person is away for work
[25:11] Speaker 6: and then treat that as a reason to say the
[25:14] Speaker 6: person has shifted permanently. So basically shifting to one place
[25:19] Speaker 6: for a work and shifting permanently, these two are not
[25:22] Speaker 6: same things. So the Form 7 process specifically distinguishes between
[25:26] Speaker 6: someone being absent and someone being permanently shifted. And that
[25:30] Speaker 6: is something that has.
[25:32] Speaker 5: To be verified.
[25:33] Speaker 6: So for example, one voter was there, Mohammad Nishad. So
[25:36] Speaker 6: he told the Indian Express that he goes wherever he
[25:39] Speaker 6: gets work, but continues to vote in Jharkhand. And the
[25:42] Speaker 6: same with voter Shamim, who also works outside Jharkhand, but his.
[25:45] Speaker 5: Family and home remain in his village.
[25:49] Speaker 6: So my concern apart from this investigation is that these
[25:52] Speaker 6: people who are the migrant workers, how would you confirm
[25:56] Speaker 6: that these people are having Now, on the other side,
[25:59] Speaker 6: several villagers expressed fears not only about voting, but about
[26:02] Speaker 6: government schemes and even whether deletion could lead to questions
[26:04] Speaker 6: about their citizenship. So for now, the important thing is
[26:30] Speaker 6: that their names are not supposed to be deleted because
[26:32] Speaker 6: what the BDO and the officials are saying that the
[26:35] Speaker 6: official confirmation we have got from the BLOs that they
[26:37] Speaker 6: are the permanent resident. But still, for instance, what the
[26:40] Speaker 6: people are saying is that that they will lose the
[26:42] Speaker 6: government benefit. They have no idea what exactly happens when
[26:45] Speaker 6: the names get deleted from the voters list.
[26:48] Speaker 5: So they have no idea.
[26:49] Speaker 6: They are just confused. And in this confusing state, they
[26:52] Speaker 6: are asking the BLOs that what will happen. And BLOs
[26:56] Speaker 6: are not supposed to tell exactly what will happen.
[26:58] Speaker 5: They have no idea.
[26:59] Speaker 6: So they are asking if we will be the citizen
[27:01] Speaker 6: of India or not. I mean, that is the question
[27:04] Speaker 6: that is coming into their mind and the government benefits.
[27:07] Speaker 6: And if we will not get the voting right to
[27:09] Speaker 6: whom we will vote. So people are actually questioning the
[27:11] Speaker 6: system that who had already gave them the right to vote.
[27:15] Speaker 6: They have previously voted in last election, Assembly Election 2024,
[27:18] Speaker 6: what we got to know through voters.
[27:20] Speaker 5: So they are in the confusing state right now.
[27:28] Speaker 2: And in the end, we talk about a nearly month-long
[27:31] Speaker 2: strike by around 13,000 sanitation workers in Haryana, a labour
[27:36] Speaker 2: dispute that has now become a significant political challenge for
[27:40] Speaker 2: the BJP government. The strike entered its 28th day on Wednesday,
[27:45] Speaker 2: with workers demanding regularization of their jobs. As reported by
[27:50] Speaker 2: the Indian Express's Sukbir Sivaj, the agitation has disrupted sanitation
[27:54] Speaker 2: services across several urban areas and has also led to
[27:58] Speaker 2: confrontations between workers, police and local officials. The Haryana government
[28:04] Speaker 2: says it has already held six rounds of talks with
[28:07] Speaker 2: the workers and accepted 12 of their 13 demands. The
[28:11] Speaker 2: sticking point is regularization. Social Justice Minister Krishan Bedi and
[28:17] Speaker 2: Urban Local Bodies Minister Vipul Goel have said there are
[28:21] Speaker 2: legal obstacles to making thousands of workers permanent employees, citing
[28:26] Speaker 2: concerns that such appointments could be viewed by courts as
[28:29] Speaker 2: backdoor recruitment. Instead, the government has proposed increasing monthly wages
[28:35] Speaker 2: from Rs 19,000 to Rs 21,000. But the agitation has
[28:39] Speaker 2: intensified on the ground. In several places, authorities attempted to
[28:44] Speaker 2: clear accumulated garbage using JCB machines, only to be blocked
[28:48] Speaker 2: by striking workers. Some protesters have been detained and FIRs registered,
[28:54] Speaker 2: while the Workers' Union has alleged that police personnel assaulted
[28:58] Speaker 2: or mistreated women protesters. Congress has now taken the issue
[29:03] Speaker 2: into the Assembly, accusing the government of using force against
[29:06] Speaker 2: workers and demanding that their services be regularised. The BJP
[29:11] Speaker 2: in turn has accused the opposition of politicising and provoking
[29:15] Speaker 2: the agitation. Now what makes this more than a municipal
[29:19] Speaker 2: labour dispute is the caste dimension. A large section of
[29:23] Speaker 2: Haryana's sanitation workforce belongs to the Valmiki community, an important
[29:27] Speaker 2: section of the state's scheduled caste population. Dalits constitute around
[29:32] Speaker 2: 20% of Haryana's population and the BJP has made sustained
[29:36] Speaker 2: efforts in recent years to expand its support among Valmikis
[29:41] Speaker 2: and other SE groups. That makes the continuing strike politically sensitive.
[29:46] Speaker 2: A Valmiki community leader told the Indian Express that the
[29:50] Speaker 2: handling of the protests, particularly allegations of police action against
[29:54] Speaker 2: women workers, could alienate sections of the community from the BJP.
[30:01] Speaker 2: You were listening to Three Things by The Indian Express.
[30:04] Speaker 2: Today's show was edited and mixed by Suresh Bavar and
[30:07] Speaker 2: produced by Shashank Bhargav and me, Itchha Sharma. If you
[30:10] Speaker 2: like the show, do subscribe to us wherever you get
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[30:23] Speaker 2: Podcast or write to us at podcast at indianexpress.com.

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