India's overall macroeconomic situation in recovery mode but facing stagflation: Kaushik Basu

17 Jan 2022 Evaluate

The former World Bank Chief Economist Kaushik Basu has said that India's overall macroeconomic situation is in a recovery mode but the growth is concentrated at the top end, which is a worrying trend. Amid the rising inflationary trends, including the sharp increase in retail inflation last month, Basu said the country is facing stagflation and ‘very carefully curated policy interventions’ are required to address the situation. He said while the aggregate economy is growing, ‘the bottom half of India’ is in recession, and noted that it was sad the country's policy over the last few years has been largely focused on big businesses.

He also said the youth unemployment rate in the country touched 23 per cent, among the highest globally, even before the COVID-19 pandemic started. He added workers, farmers and small businesses are seeing negative growth. While India's GDP is estimated to grow 9.2 per cent in 2021-22, Basu said since this comes after a contraction of 7.3 per cent in 2019-20 due to the pandemic, the average growth rate over the last two years is 0.6 per cent per annum. On whether the government should be going for fiscal  consolidation or continue with stimulus measures in the upcoming Budget, Basu said the current situation in India is a big challenge to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the entire fiscal policy apparatus.

He said the Indian economy is facing stagflation, which is much more painful and requires very carefully curated policy interventions, and added that 15 years ago, inflation was even higher, close to 10 per cent, but there was one big difference. He pointed out ‘at that time, India's real growth was close to 9 per cent... so, even with the inflation, the average household was becoming better off per capita by 7 or 8 per cent’. According to Basu, what makes the current situation so grim is that the near 5 per cent inflation is occurring over a fall in real per capita income over the last two years. He observed ‘Since this is a stagflation situation, the big task is to create jobs and help small business... the task now is to create jobs while at the same increasing output’.

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