5 per cent GDP growth: Proximate, underlying and theoretical reasons

The ship of the Indian economy is sinking because it is taking water from a hundred holes in its keel. These will take a long time to be fixed

So the Indian economy grew by just 5 per cent in the first quarter of this financial year. This reminds me of a favourite question in history exams.

This was “Distinguish between the underlying and proximate causes” of some event, say, the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution or the First World War or whatever.

Such a question, to the best of my knowledge, was never asked in questions papers on economic history which had a brief flowering between 1950 and 1980. It has now disappeared from the curricula.

Had it been taught, there might have been some people who