There is a specific kind of boredom that settles in when one watches a politician attempt to engage with mathematics. It is the boredom of watching a magician perform a trick where the rabbit is clearly dead before it even enters the hat. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India and current masquerader-in-chief of the Global South, has unveiled his grand vision for the Indian economy. The target? A $10 trillion economy by the year 2047. To the uninitiated, ten trillion dollars sounds like a great deal of money. It is enough to buy several small countries or perhaps one medium-sized American tech company by the time inflation finishes eating the currency alive. But to those of us who possess the curse of literacy and a calculator, this target is not a moonshot. It is a pathetic, sandbagged surrender masquerading as a civilizational triumph.

Let us deconstruct the timeline, shall we? The year 2047. It is a convenient date, chosen not for its economic relevance, but for its sentimental value. It marks the centenary of India’s independence, a number round enough to satisfy the primitive human urge for decimal-based celebrations. More importantly, it is sufficiently far in the future that Modi, currently seventy-three years old, will almost certainly not be in office to answer for the discrepancies. This is the first and most sacred rule of political prophecy: always place the deadline beyond your own actuarial horizon. It allows one to bask in the warm, golden glow of visionary leadership today while leaving the inevitable cleanup to a successor who is currently still in middle school. It is a intergenerational ponzi scheme of expectations.

The criticism leveled at this target—that it is "paltry"—is entirely correct, though the critics miss the cynical brilliance of it. The current discourse suggests that Modi should be bolder, that he should aim for higher growth rates, that India has the potential to sprint rather than jog toward the mid-century. This assumes that the goal of a politician is to maximize the potential of their nation. This is a charmingly naive assumption. The goal of a politician is to set a bar so low that they can trip over it and still claim they cleared a hurdle. By setting a target of $10 trillion over nearly a quarter of a century, the Indian administration is essentially predicting that the country will continue to exist and that inflation will occur. That is not a strategy; that is just the passage of time.

Consider the trajectory of India’s neighbor and existential obsession, China. When China decided to modernize, they didn't aim for a gentle incline; they force-fed their economy steroids until it grew muscles on its eyelids. It was horrific, dystopian, and ecologically disastrous, but it was *ambitious*. Modi’s plan, by contrast, is the economic equivalent of a participation trophy. It relies on the much-touted "demographic dividend"—the idea that having a massive population of young people is automatically an economic boon. In a functional system, yes, labor is capital. In a system choked by a bureaucracy that makes the Kafkaesque seem like a documentary, a surplus of unemployed youth is not a dividend; it is a Molotov cocktail waiting for a match. Aiming low minimizes the pressure to actually employ these people, resigning them to the gig economy of the future, delivering synthetic nutrient paste to the wealthy elites of Mumbai.

The sheer lack of imagination involved in this $10 trillion figure is insulting to the intelligence of the electorate, though perhaps the electorate has been beaten down enough to accept it. To reach this target, India needs to grow. But the growth required is barely above the stall speed necessary to keep the bicycle upright. It is a target that accounts for the inevitable dragging friction of corruption, the crumbling infrastructure that is perpetually "under construction," and the regulatory environment that functions like a randomized algorithm of despair. By promising less, the administration protects itself from the embarrassment of failing to achieve more. It is the safe bet. It is the vanilla ice cream of economic forecasting.

Furthermore, the obsession with the gross domestic product as a metric for success is, in itself, a bore. Whether the economy is $10 trillion or $15 trillion in 2047 matters very little to the average citizen if the air remains unbreathable and the water remains potable only to those with immune systems of steel. But nuance does not fit on a billboard. Big numbers do. And so, we are treated to the spectacle of a leader pointing to a number twenty-three years away, a number that is statistically inevitable barring a nuclear winter, and demanding applause for his foresight.

Ultimately, this "paltry" target reveals the true nature of modern governance across the globe, from Washington to New Delhi. It is no longer about transformation. It is about management. It is about keeping the lights on just bright enough to prevent a riot, while promising that the sun will definitely shine brighter a few decades from now. Modi’s $10 trillion dream isn't a roadmap to a superpower status; it's a doctor’s note excusing the nation from gym class. The world looks on, not with awe, but with the weary recognition of a student watching a teacher write the answer on the chalkboard before the test has even begun.