A hard rain's gonna fall

The festival season notwithstanding, don't place your bets on high growth in consumption

Bad economic news has been pouring since last year. The finance minister (FM) bravely averred that such news should be discounted. The spin’s not working. A sudden volte-face, and now the government is talking stimulus package. Clearly, all is not well.

How did we come to this pass? First, there was the demonetisation (DeMo) disaster. It did not achieve any of the objectives announced by the prime minister and it wreaked economic havoc (Articles in this paper on December 7 and 26, 2016, and June 27, 2017). DeMo led to the foreseeable collapse of economic activity. Worst hit were construction, the