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

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 by 33 per cent. This was at a time when the World Bank, the IMF, the finance ministry, nearly all