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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local....

Festive Surge

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person and buying local. This reversal owes much to policy. The recent rationalisation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which trimmed rates across categories from garments to home furnishings, has given consumption a timely push. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s September rate cuts, combined with income tax relief and easing interest rates, have strengthened household budgets just as inflation softened. The middle class, long squeezed between rising costs and stagnant wages, has found reason to spend again. Retailers report that shoppers filled their bags with everything from lab-grown diamonds and casual wear to consumer durables and décor, blurring the line between necessity and indulgence. The effect has been broad-based. According to Crisil Ratings, 40 organised apparel retailers, who together generate roughly a third of the sector’s revenue, could see growth of 13–14 percent this financial year, aided by a 200-basis-point bump from GST cuts alone. Small traders too have flourished. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) estimates that 85 percent of total festive trade came from non-corporate and traditional markets, a robust comeback for brick-and-mortar retail that had been under siege from online rivals. This surge signals a subtle but significant cultural shift. The “Vocal for Local” and “Swadeshi Diwali” campaigns struck a patriotic chord, with consumers reportedly preferring Indian-made products to imported ones. Demand for Chinese goods fell sharply, while sales of Indian-manufactured products rose by a quarter over last year. For the first time in years, “buying Indian” has become both an act of economic participation and of national pride. The sectoral spread of this boom underlines its breadth. Groceries and fast-moving consumer goods accounted for 12 percent of the total, gold and jewellery 10 percent, and electronics 8 percent. Even traditionally modest categories like home furnishings, décor and confectionery recorded double-digit growth. In the smaller towns that anchor India’s consumption story, traders say stable prices and improved affordability kept registers ringing late into the festive weekend. Yet, much of this buoyancy rests on a fragile equilibrium. Inflation remains contained, and interest rates have been eased, but both could tighten again. Sustaining this spurt will require continued fiscal prudence and regulatory clarity, especially as digital commerce continues to expand its reach. Yet for now, the signs are auspicious. After years of subdued demand and inflationary unease, India’s shoppers appear to have rediscovered their appetite for consumption and their faith in domestic enterprise. The result is not only a record-breaking Diwali, but a reaffirmation of the local marketplace as the heartbeat of India’s economy.

Selective Amnesia

History is often an inconvenient companion. It tells stories of grandeur but also tales of horror, conquest and cruelty. Today’s India, it seems, would prefer to forget the less savoury parts. This week, the new Class 7 NCERT Social Science textbook, reworked in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) and the 2023 National Curriculum Framework, has excised all references to the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. In their place stand glowing chapters on ‘Indian ethos,’ sacred geographies and triumphant Central government schemes like ‘Make in India’ and ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao.’


This is not the first time India’s rulers have tried to fashion the past to suit the present. In the early decades after Independence, the Nehruvian establishment, suspicious of nationalism and keen to forge a syncretic identity, instructed historians to tread carefully. A 1982 NCERT guideline explicitly cautioned against glorifying either Aurangzeb - the Mughal emperor synonymous with bigotry and destruction - or the Gupta Empire, often regarded as the zenith of India’s ancient past. As a result, generations of Indians grew up with an airbrushed version of history, where brutal invasions were reimagined as cultural exchanges and civilizational conflict was glossed over in the name of harmony.


But if Nehruvian history erred by whitewashing invasions, today’s policymakers commit the opposite sin by erasing them entirely. To remove the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals from textbooks is not an act of correction but of amnesia. It does not heal wounds; it denies that they ever existed.


The Mughals and the Delhi Sultanate were not minor episodes that can be edited out with a swipe of nationalist fervour. For better or worse, they reshaped the subcontinent. Their story is one of brutal conquest, religious intolerance (at least until Akbar) and cultural suppression. Precisely for these reasons, they must remain in the textbooks, not to be celebrated, but to be understood in full.


While India’s civilizational past, from the Mauryas to the Shungas to the Sātavāhanas, deserves fuller treatment than it was long given, pride must not come at the cost of truth. Sacred rivers and pilgrimage sites are no substitute for understanding how kingdoms rose and fell, how empires ruled, and how the scars of history continue to shape the present.


The instinct to sanitize history reveals an astonishing insecurity. A confident civilization does not fear its past but studies it. A confident democracy does not shield its citizens from unpleasant truths but equips them to grapple with them.


If the earlier government’s mistake was to minimize the atrocities of Islamic invaders, today’s error is to pretend that the invaders themselves were inconsequential. Both impulses are equally dangerous. History should neither be embalmed in sentimentality nor butchered for ideology.


Removing the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals from India’s classrooms will not change what happened. It will merely ensure that another generation grows up either ignorant of its past or vulnerable to distorted versions of it.

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