PM can step in to revive economy

Where will the Indian economy be, at the end of this financial year, 2020-21? And more specifically, what will be the growth rate of GDP in the first quarter [1st Qtr] of 2021-22 [April 1, 2021June 30, 2021], compared to the first quarter [1st Qtr] of 2020-21 [April 1, 2020-June 30, 2020]? Note that every financial year has four quarters.

Quarterly data obtained by the Central Statistical Office [CSO] in the Ministry of Planning are partial. For example, the database of the just released figures for industrial sector output does not include the output of MSME [which is more than 60% of the national industrial output].

Thus when Ministry of Finance flaunts the data of “industrial output”, it is an overestimate since MSME output, which has sunk to a new low, is excluded in the calculation.

For FY21 [i.e., the whole year 2020-21] compared to FY 20 [2019-20], according to my estimate, assuming the petering out of the coronavirus pandemic and resumption of normal economic activity as was in 2019-20, the decline in GDP would be about minus 10%-15%.

The former chief statistician of the government, Dr Pronab Sen said on 13 December 2020 [to Press Trust of India] that macro situation was not rosy but uncertain, and that FY21 growth rate would contract by about minus 10%, contrary to government’s claim of a much lower decline at minus 7.5%. The government claim that Qtr 3rd will have a positive growth rate is the usual spin, which prediction the

A few months ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections in West Bengal, a former close aide of Mamata Banerjee and the architect of the Nandigram movement that brought her to power in the state in 2011, Suvendu Adhikari, along with at least 40 other senior Trinamool Congress leaders joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday. According to political observers, this is the single biggest blow to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in nearly a decade that it has been ruling the state.

Adhikari joined the BJP on Saturday in his stronghold East Medinipur in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.