Coronavirus Pandemic Impact on Indian Economy: A Contrarian View
There is a lot of commentary around about how this pandemic is going to hit India’s economic prospects hard. There is a near unanimity that we are going to see the first economic contraction since 1980. But, I would like to take a different stand. I have a multiple reasons to believe that we might escape any contraction at all, at least in terms of nominal economic growth. If things turn out to be good, we might even see a modest expansion in real terms. The reasons are as follows: The lockdown precipitated by pandemic hit India, and others, during the Mar-June period. For India, this period was specifically between Apr-June. Historically, this quarter is the smallest GDP output quarter for India. Looking at quarterly GDP statistics for last decade, this quarter contributesabout 22-23% of the annual output. Comparatively, for developed economies, it contributes around 26-28%. India was hit by contraction in the smallest output time-period for its economy, whereas others we...
