At a time when Sensex has scaled Mount 80000 and is looking at taming new heights comes a report that India ranks among the top three most optimistic markets in the world.
According to the June 2024 Report of the Ipsos What Worries the World global survey, India at 69% ranks only below Singapore (79%) and Indonesia (70%) on the optimism index.
Amit Adarkar, Ipsos India CEO, explained the reasons for optimism as he saw it.
"As a market, India has been quite stable. The government has been taking steps to offset the impact of global macro conditions on the citizens, to a large extent. Whether it is fuel prices or inflation; growing economy, now the fifth largest and fuelled by domestic consumption; or India being a dominant voice of Global South; being a part of several global forums, whether BRICS, or QUAD, special invitee to the G7 Summit; with strides in technology and a mighty military power, is resonating well with the citizens and they feel re-assured of the future," Adarkar noted.
The survey comes during a month that saw Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party miss out on a simple majority, ending up 63 seats below their 2019 tally of 303.
With 240 seats for his party, Modi is now leading an NDA government that is reliant on support from two key allies - Chandrababu Naidu's TDP that won 16 seats and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) that won 12 seats. Experts had agreed the results reflected a significant drop in confidence levels in the government.
Even the survey captured that "Urban Indians were seen to be most worried about inflation (38%) (-3%) in June 2024, though there was a -3% reduction in worry around this issue; followed by unemployment (35%) (-9%), seeing a -9% drop in worry levels, education (26%) (+4%), financial and political corruption (23%) (-4%), and crime and violence (22%)."
Unemployment and inflation were both seen by many experts as key reasons why BJP had a reduced mandate in 2024.
The survey's findings of a nine per cent drop in worries around unemployment and three per cent drop in worries around inflation in the month might in the circumstances have to be taken with a healthy pinch of salt. More so, since the new government is only settling in and there have been no big-bang announcements yet.
The Budget due towards the end of July could hold better indications. With the market already at a lifetime high, Nirmala Sitharaman might have to put her finest foot forward and hit it out of the park in her big speech for optimism to be uncorked truly.