The past year 2020, will be remembered in history as the year when the balloon of the spin artistes in the Ministry of Finance [since 2014], was pricked.
All indications are that the third Quarter of 2020-21 [October-December, 2020] will reveal negative trends in most parts of the GDP sectors. As of now, even as officials of NITI Aayog were to sing praises of how the government has turned around the Covid-19 caused decline, the combined index of eight core industries, published by another branch of government, revealed it to be minus 2.6% in November 2020, compared to November 2019, after having briefly recovered in July. Furthermore, during April to November 2020, the index has declined by minus 11.4%.
For MSME we have no data as yet. But no doubt the growth rate in this sector has much more sharply declined. Thus for industrial production as a whole, the annual 2020-21 industrial numbers will be a big minus, and not as predicted be on “green shoots” or a “V shaped curve” trajectory. I do not want to go repeating in these columns the miserable economic performance of the government, not only during the coronavirus pandemic, but since 2015-16.
But fortunately India or Bharat is destined to survive, as it has done so many times in the past. It is better for this author to addresses what we now need to do to prepare for this destiny.
India, that is Bharat, and also known as Hindustan, survived over 900+ years of ravage, waves of brutal foreign aggression and then imperialist brainwashing [remember “White Man’s Burden”?] and loot, as also fought off cruel debilitating intrusive religious conversions since 1192 AD, and finally became victorious in 1947. From 1757 to 1947, the Imperialists had siphoned off $71 trillion [today’s GDP is $2.6 million—see Reset authored by me and published by Rupa], to emerge as a democratic Republic of India in 1950.
Since then India has recovered substantially, has remained democratic, survived five wars, suppressed secessionist attempts, and has now emerged as the third most prosperous country [by GDP size] and second most populous nation in the world.
Today in 2021, India is at a turning point in history—whether or not it can emerge as an innovative global economic and military power, a population with a mental outlook, or alternatively, the mindset, that matches the requirements of this concomitant global role, in short as a Guru for the world as we were before the foreign invasions.