STEADY AT THE WHEEL

The FM has run a tight ship through Covid and the war in Ukraine, but sluggish disinvestment and inflation remain significant problems

- M.G. Arun

Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance

STORMS TEND TO HAVE NAMES THESE DAYS. After a bit of wavering, this one was named, simply, Covid. A monster that switched off headlights all over the world, the Modi government wasn't even a year into term two when it struck. The health emergency was so acute and all-pervasive that it became, inevitably, the defining economic event of Modi 2.0. The lockdowns shuttered all activity but for those to do with bare existence. The economy plunged into negative growth for two straight quarters in 2020: sector after sector asphyxiated. It was a complex riddle. How to ease the immediate misery? And craft policies to cure India of economic long Covid'? Such doom and gloom-an inertia of negative momentum-had every chance of lingering. Could one try rebounding to a better place than status quo ante? The economy, after all, had been sluggish for many pre-Covid quarters.