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In charts: India�s GDP shrinks more than other major economies, decline set in before pandemic

2 September, 2020

On Monday, data released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation showed that India�s Gross Domestic Product growth rate had contracted by 23.9% for the April to June quarter. In gross value added terms, the economy had contracted by 22.8%, showed the data. The numbers quantified what was evident all around: the Indian economy is in doldrums.

To make matters worse, it is likely that the numbers will further worsen when the estimates are revised with better-quality data.

Things have never been this bad in recorded history. India has never experienced an economic contraction in at least four decades. Since 1996, when the country started publishing quarterly GDP data, this is the first instance of negative growth.

But these are extraordinary �once in one-and-a-half century� times, the government has insisted. The government�s chief economic adviser attributed the deceleration to �exogenous factors�, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns it necessitated.

Earlier, the country�s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had blamed India�s unprecedented economic slump on �an act of god�.

In short, the government line has been that the virus had slowed down all countries and there was nothing particularly unique or alarming about India�s recession.

Its battery of online supporters led by Bharatiya Janata Party functionaries has gone one step ahead. The Indian slowdown, they have affirmed, was less dramatic than several other countries including the United States. Anyone suggesting otherwise, they said, was spreading �fake news�.

But, of course, the facts are for all to see. While the pandemic has slowed down every other country in the world, the scale of economic contraction in India was bigger than almost any comparable country. For example, the year-on-year quarterly decline � percentage change from the same quarter last year � in the United States was 9.1 %, significantly less than India�s 23.9 %. �It is much worse than every other large economy in the world,� said Vivek Kaul, an economics and finance writer.