By Bruce Stokes, Director of Economic Attitudes, Pew Research Center

Special to Business Standard

All politics may be local, but in a global society national economies and the well-being of a country’s citizens are increasingly benchmarked against their peers around the world.

As the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi finishes its first half year in office, its accomplishments will first and foremost be judged in comparison to the record of its predecessor, the administration of Manmohan Singh.

But Indians are also members of an international community. They have opinions about the health of their nation’s economy, its prospects, the state of their lives and the future for both themselves and the next generation. How those assessments stack up against judgments made by people in other comparable economies – by Bangladeshis, Brazilians, Chinese and Indonesians about their own lives – may be the second yardstick history will ultimately use to assess the Modi government’s record.