Notional exuberance

Hope, it was once thought, was the commodity in shortest supply in India. The time has now come to worry about a glut. If an online survey on Global Consumer Confidence and Opinions conducted by AC Nielsen is anything to go by, Indian consumers are falling over one another in their exuberance.

They are more confident of their economy's future performance than people in all the 37 other countries surveyed. Overwhelmingly so too.

A gulp-worthy 88 per cent of the respondents expect India to do well over the next 12 months. China, infamous for looking over net surfers' shoulders, ranks second with 80 per cent of its people bullish about the future.

Just six months ago, Indian consumers were markedly less enthusiastic. What explains the change? The stimuli, reckons AC Nielsen, are mostly external.

The giddy heights of the BSE Sensex, the sudden burst of job opportunities, the upturn in salaries and the cascading effects of increased spending by businesses and the government.

All these indicators of prosperity have joined hands to make Indian consumers feel so good that they could bust the biggest spending records""the ghost of Austere Authority having been exorcised, at long last, over the liberalisation years.

To a hardnosed analyst watching monsoon clouds and policy shrouds, this heady optimism would appear irrational. But take a good look at the bigger picture.

Agricultural output may still depend on the rains, PSU sell-offs may be sputtering, and oil prices rising. But broadly speaking, India does have mostly everything going for it, with market reforms having given the economy a dose of efficiency and a sense of direction, and the uncertainties associated with that decisive break from the past having got moderated to a reassuring extent.

The growth trajectory has turned upwards, breakdowns of social cohesion have receded as a big worry, and the exhilaration of faster growth has had a profound effect on how Indians envision the future.

Optimistic consumers make for high-spending consumers. This is what the survey has captured. The problem, thus, is not that these respondents might be living too much in cyber-la-la land to get a grasp of reality.

They are aware of the world around them, and each rupee they spend is good for the economy as its multiplier effect ripples through.

The problem, if there is one, is that such notional measures often get taken too seriously by people whose responsibilities go beyond consumption. Over-optimism cheapens hope.

It lulls people into the comfortable thought that little further effort is required, few sacrifices need to be made and virtually no cost need be borne for India to become a dreamland of opportunity for all. In other words, it could end up as a big contributor to complacency.

India is still a poor country, with much misery and injustice, and even at a double-digit growth rate, it will remain so for longer than our national conscience should allow. Plenty needs to be done before people start patting one another on the back.