2020, the year that was: Coronavirus shadow may not go anytime soon

Achieving a vaccine roll-out on a scale that social-distancing norms can be dispensed with can't be expected for most of 2021

At the beginning of 2020, nobody could have predicted that it would turn out to be one of the worst years for the Indian economy in memory. Quarterly growth in gross domestic product (GDP) had begun to slow, but even so there was some optimism about the course of the year.

But, although very few knew of it, the novel coronavirus was already raging through the city of Wuhan in the closing days of December 2019. The lockdowns and social distancing that followed the spread of the coronavirus have impacted growth everywhere, but in no G-20 country as much as in