How fast did India’s economy grow during the 10 years when Manmohan Singh headed two successive UPA governments and during the four years of Narendra Modi’s current administration? The answer should be a couple of simple numbers, like weighing bags of bhindi, right? Wrong.Today, our growth figures are distilled from steaming potions and boiling brews, concocted in the bowels of some mathematical Mordor. After much toil, we derive bizarrely different figures, each claiming to be the ‘real’ measure of incremental prosperity. In short: duh?In August, an expert group headed by economist Sudipto Mundle said 10 years of UPA propelled India’s growth by an average 8% per year; the Modi years saw this dip to 7.3%. It also reckoned 2010-11 saw 10.8% growth, the highest in history, beating 10.2% in 1988-89 under Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership.Emosanal AtyacharFolks who are emotionally affected by such things experienced either apoplectic fits or wild euphoria. Then sarkar banished these figures to online oblivion.But on Wednesday, GoI, with some help from NITI Aayog, unveiled our ‘really-real’ growth figures. Presto, growth during the Singh-led UPA decade has been knocked down to 6.7% annually; and the winner is 7.3%, achieved in the three years of Modi.19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “There is no quicker way of getting the crowd to shout Hosannah, than by riding into the city on the back of an ass.” Assembly polls are underway in five states and general elections are five months off. Expect donkey stampedes.Like bikinis, GDP growth numbers reveal what’s suggestive, concealing much that’s vital. Here are some things concealed by the ‘bikini’. If growth galloped in these Modi years, why are we investing only 26% of total income, down from 2007’s substantial 36%? Falling investment reflects jitters about our future and indicates a slowdown, not turbocharged growth.India’s hinterlands are reportedly seething with anger. Why are states like Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat, once among India’s wealthiest, in turmoil? Why are jats in north India, marathas in Maharashtra and Gujarat’s patidars scrambling for reservations in sarkari education and jobs, when they’re among India’s best-off, politically powerful groups?Short answer: large-scale farm distress, flat or falling rural wages, and zero opportunity for millions of young people coming into the job market every year. They chafe at government apathy.In a March 2018 paper, ‘Rural Wage Dynamics in India: What Role Does Inflation Play?’, Sujata Kundu, an economist at RBI, breaks up recent farm poverty and prosperity into three phases. The first, between 2002 and 2007, saw average farm wages rise 4% in money terms. But farm inflation, around 4.5%, soared faster, effectively making people worse off.Things changed for the better in the six years of 2007-13, when farm and non-farm wages in villages rose 17% and 15% respectively, much faster than a 10% rise in prices. This prosperity was driven by buoyant commodity rates as well as welfare schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) implemented by UPA, which cushioned distress in bad years.How We Have GroanThe UPA-era gains fell off a cliff between 2014 and today. Now, farm wage growth, at a measly 6%, barely keeps its head above an average 4% rise in rural prices. Whatever happened to achhe din?Distress spills over to every corner of the economy. Company finances, shackled by low demand and investment, are sputtering. In the 10 UPA years, earnings (or profits) per share for a large sample of Indian companies jumped 24% every year. During the Modi years, this has crawled at a little above 4%.The unwary punter looks at elevated blue-chip indices like the Nifty 50, or the 30-share Sensex, and believes all is well with the world. But do these levels provide any inkling of what’s to come, say, in a year?Between 1986 and 1993, finance economists Menachem Brenner, Dan Galai and Robert Whaley worked with the US’ largest options market, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), to design an index of future equity prices. This was based on traded ‘options’, bets on future values of equities. The outcome was VIX, a ‘volatility index’, or the ‘fear factor’ in markets.In India, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) maintains its own fear index. Today, the Nifty VIX trades around 19. This means, in the next one year, the market can swing 19% up or down with a near-70% chance. This is way higher than its level of 14 one year ago; it is 118% higher than the 2017 low.‘Life doesn’t imitate art,’ said Woody Allen, ‘it imitates bad television.’ Make that business TV, where beaming gurus sell snake oil to hapless day-traders. All will be well, they say, if crude collapses, the rupee gets stronger, the economy soars and BJP triumphs on December 11. So why aren’t folks who bet on risk, buying into bad-TV nirvana?