The Pandemic and the Slowdown
Empowering people is the right way out of the economic crisis The Indian economy had already entered a period of slowdown before the corona virus crisis hit the market. There were clear indications of a slowdown gripping the economy just before the pandemic started showing impacts. This was the third occurrence of an economic slowdown for India in the past decade after those that began in June 2008 and March 2011. In technical term it would be called growth recession. Generally three subsequent quarters of contraction in GDP is called recession in an economy. But since India is a large developing country contraction is nothing uncommon. A growth recession is generally observed when the economy continues to grow but at a slower pace than the usual for a prolonged period, much like what India has been facing nowadays. India’s growth rate has dropped to 5% in the first quarter of Financial Year 2020, the lowest in over six years. In the words of economist Raj Krishna the gr...