A story is fiction, after all.

Last month, "Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called on Silicon Valley biggies to be part of the 'India growth story', pointing out how India is set to be the world's fastest-growing major economy for the next few years," The Week. "Our startups are changing the rules of the game. I believe that startups are going to be the backbone of New India," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "India, he said, has over 60,000 startups with 42 unicorns," BT. " 'Unicorn' is a term used in the venture capital industry to describe a privately held startup company with a value of over $1 billion," Investopedia. However, "This story is now unravelling with valuations going gradually out of fashion and cash-flows making a comeback," wrote Vivek Kaul. "A few unicorns which had planned initial public offerings (IPOs) have postponed them. A few more have decided to get out of the unviable businesses they were in." "The India growth story that has been sold to us over the years can be summarized in one line: There are lots of Indians and we can sell them something." But, Indians don't earn enough and a salary of just Rs 25,000 (per month) would put an Indian in the "top 10% in terms of total income earned". "of course, this was known all along," but "those selling the idea of 1.4 billion Indians and the huge Indian market were either selling a narrative knowing fully well it was a lie, or they had bought the narrative themselves." "India is what the World Bank describes as a lower middle income country. The average income of an Indian was $1,935 in 2020," wrote Niranjan Rajadhyaksha. The per capita income is expected to double to $4,000 towards the end of the decade, taking India to an upper middle income country. China took just 4 years to double its per capita income, South Korea took 5 years, Taiwan took 6 years, while the Philippines took 16 years. The median is 10 years. Since the income is mentioned in dollars, it depends on the exchange rate of the currency which depends on inflation. It also depends on productivity and global growth. In 2014-15 the economy was growing at 7.4% and per capita income was growing at 6.2%, wrote Prof Himanshu. "The economy continued to accelerate to reach the highest GDP growth of 8.3% in 2016-17 with per capita income growing at 6.9% - the highest level in a decade." "Since then, per capita income has declined at 0.2% per annum between 2017-18 and 2021-22. The last time per capita incomes declined for a five-year period was five decades ago." Consumer price inflation soared to an 8-year high of 7.79% in April, TIE. The rupee is trading at 77.60 to one dollar this morning, xe.com. "At a time when inflation is already so high, any further depreciation in the rupee is going to hit us primarily through the inflation route and that is going to be catastrophic," said Mythili Bhusnurmath. A decade is too optimistic.