-The Indian Express To achieve economic growth of 7-8 per cent, the government needs to start addressing some of the traditional sore points such as the large infrastructure deficit, the weak financial sector, archaic land and labour laws, and the administrative and judicial hurdles. India entered the pandemic with declining growth and limited scope for a conventional and large fiscal stimulus. We had noted in an article (IE, January 20, ‘Limited scope...

-The Telegraph The last time that India faced a full-year contraction in its real GDP was in 1980 The Indian economy shrank by 23.9 per cent in the first quarter ended June 30, signalling that the road to recovery would be more arduous than most economists have projected. It marks the steepest decline since the National Statistical Office (NSO) started quarterly measurement of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1996. The slide in real GDP...

-Livemint.com The collapse of GDP growth by 23.9% for the Apr to Jun period isn’t a surprise. The economy was under a strict lockdown for most of the time to contain the pandemic. Nevertheless, a little digging throws up interesting trends. Mint takes a look. * What does the GDP figure highlight? One way to measure the GDP is to add private consumption expenditure, government consumption expenditure, investment and net exports (exports minus...

-The Telegraph Why are animal spirits in quarantine? Animal spirits, the primordial driver of growth that is unquantifiable, are once more in the spotlight. The current context is the dire growth outlook from the Covid-19 impact, future prospects and how to improve these. However, the absence of animal spirits has been felt and commented upon longer than that. It can be traced as far back as the 2012-13 slowdown, or the shortfall...

Huge sums of money are allocated for the rural and agrarian sectors by the Union Government in its annual budget every year, and rightly so. But in the absence of an adequate number of officials in rural areas, can the various schemes and programmes of the government be implemented properly? We will find the answer if we think about this issue deeply and the answer that would emerge should bother...