RBI Consumer Survey: Confidence in NDA down, but still ahead of Opposition

The RBI’s Consumer Confidence surveys ask questions about current and future (year ahead) perceptions about income, employment and the general economic situation

Updated on: Aug 3, 2018, 10:12:26 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Roshan Kishore

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the results of its latest Consumer Confidence survey on August 1, 2018. These surveys ask questions about current and future (year ahead) perceptions about income, employment and the general economic situation. The difference between future and current perception on improvement can be taken as a good proxy for anti-incumbency, or the lack of it.

A man walks past the entrance of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) head office in Mumbai. (AFP Photo)

These values had started increasing from the end of 2012 and peaked in mid-2014. This was also the period when Narendra Modi was leading the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ‘Achhe Din’ campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

This suggests that the electorate felt it was worse off under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) rule, and believed that the BJP’s coming to power would improve matters.

By March 2015, these values had come down significantly, signalling the end of the euphoria around the BJP’s campaign.

The declining trend continued till November 2016, but there was a short spike in December 2016.

This suggests that people might have believed the government’s claims that demonetisation would lead to a large-scale purge against black money and hence improve their well being. The curve has largely been flat since 2017. There is an important political takeaway from this trend. The BJP will probably not enjoy the tail winds it enjoyed in 2014 in the next elections. However, a lack of hope that the economic situation will improve significantly in the next one year — economic mismanagement is an important Opposition charge against this government — also suggests that the electorate has so far not placed its bet on an anti-Modi campaign, like it did in an anti UPA one in late 2012. A status quo in these trends suggests it may still be advantage BJP in 2019 at a time when the Opposition is banding together

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roshan Kishore
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.Read More

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