Coronavirus: India Suffers Record GDP Slump As Covid-19 Cases Surge
India’s record 23.9% decline in gross domestic product (GDP) in the June quarter from a year ago — the biggest of major economies tracked by Bloomberg — prompted banks like Nomura Holdings Inc. to downgrade their full-year forecasts for this year to -10.8%. It also shifts the focus back to the government and central bank on what steps can be taken to spur growth.
India’s record contraction last quarter sets back economic progress by several years and puts Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious targets of doubling the economy’s size to $5 trillion almost out of reach.
The lockdown of India’s entire population of 1.4 billion people to slow the spread of the coronavirus came at the cost of hollowing out an economy built over decades.
With 3.7 million infections and more than 65,000 deaths, India’s virus outbreak is now the world’s fastest-growing and the infections are fast rocketing through its vast landscape.
It has been reporting the highest single-day caseload in the world for nearly three weeks and the overall virus tally is expected to soon pass Brazil, and eventually the United States.
But India’s economy has had the most drastic fall in decades and unemployment is soaring.
So states are opening up anyway and new surges are being recorded in the country’s vast hinterlands, overwhelming the poorly equipped healthcare system.
But even as numbers soar, indicating the upward trajectory of the infections, the real bellwether of what is yet to come, experts say, can be seen in the public.
During the lockdown, the movement of people was strictly limited, between cities and towns and even residential blocks.
Police patrolled the streets and people had to prove that they needed to go outside for work, health, to buy groceries or any other emergency necessity.
Masks and social distancing regulations were enforced by the federal government with steep fines and the rules were followed, even if grudgingly.
Now, things have taken a turn.
Masks often are missing or lowered till chins and restrictions are being eased further and people are flocking markets and going out for work.
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