Ministers of the BJP government are at pains to underscore that the fundamentals of the Indian economy are “strong”. Investment, consumption, savings and employment constitute an economy’s fundamentals. In India’s case, all these parameters are signalling grave distress. A combination of poor policy choices with the continuous and systematic dismantling of India’s institutions has led to the current impasse. The slow meltdown of the Indian economy is a project that has now been in the works for five years.
India’s nominal GDP is $2.61 trillion and is growing at 5 per cent—the slowest pace of growth in six years. The Index of Industrial Production of the manufacturing sector grew by 1.2 percent in June 2019, as compared to 6.9 per cent in June 2018. The manufacturing sector’s growth during April-June 2019 was 3.1 per cent as compared to 5.1 per cent during the corresponding period of the previous year.
In July 2019, the production of eight core industries grew by 2.1 per cent as compared to a growth of 7.3...
