The Lost Decade (2008-2018) How India's Growth Story Devolved into Growth without a Story

Before the global financial meltdown of 2008 India's economy was thriving and itsGDP growth was cruising at an impressive 8.8 per cent. The economic boom impacteda large section of Indians even if unequally. With sustained high growth over an extendedperiod India could have achieved what economists call a 'take-off' (rapid andself-sustained GDP growth). The global financial meltdown disrupted thismomentum in 2008.In the decade that followed each time the country's economy came close to returningto that growth trajectory political events knocked it off course.In 2019 India's GDP is growing at the rate of 7 per cent making it the fastest-growingmajor economy in the world but little on the ground suggests that Indians are actuallybetter off. Economic discontent and insecurity are on the rise farmers are restive andland-owning classes are demanding quotas in government jobs. The middleclass is palpably disaffected the informal economy is struggling and big businessesare no longer expanding aggressively.India is not the star it was in 2008 and in effect the 'India growth story' has devolvedinto 'growth without a story'. The Lost Decade tells the story of the slideand examines the political context in which the Indian economy failed to recoverlost momentum. About the Author Puja Mehra is a New Delhi-based journalist. In a reporting career of over seventeen years she has covered government especially the finance ministry and other economic ministries Planning Commission its successor NITI Aayog Prime Minister's Office and Parliament. She won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award in 2008 and 2009 for her stories on the impact of the Lehman Brothers' collapse-triggered financial meltdown and the subsequent global economic downturn in India's economy. She has been the economics editor ofThe Hindu. Puja received her MA in economics from Delhi School of Economics.