India's road to economic recovery will be a long, hard and painful one

Real GDP in 2021-22 will be lower than in 2019-20 and the economic, social and strategic consequences will be profoundly negative

Four months ago, I published an article presenting two scenarios of the unprecedented damage that was likely to be caused to the Indian economy by the harsh and sudden Covid-triggered lockdown imposed by the government (“The lockdown hammer”, May 14, Business Standard). They were, probably, the first grim published projections, quarter-by-quarter, of the destruction of economic activity. In one, real GDP was expected to decline by 11 per cent in 2020-21, with a crash of 25 per cent in Q1. In the other scenario, the full year decline was projected at 14 per cent, with Q1 output dropping