Economy: Running as it is supposed to

With the Indian economy and markets, if you are too pessimistic, you will miss an opportunity; we saw this starting from the middle of 2022 until now, when growth has been strong across the board and stocks have shot up in unison.

- DEBASHIS BASU

However, once the cycle has turned, if you start to extrapolate, believing in new policies, ministerial claims, and selective positive anecdotes, all amplified by social media, you will be frustrated. In the absence of structural changes, the pendulum of growth starts to swing back to normal and over to the other side. This is perhaps what is happening now, which frustrates die-hard optimists. We saw a glimpse of this in Washington last month when Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman railed: "Where economic activities are good and robust and dynamic, money flows. That is the normal textbook assumption. I want to ask, where are the investable funds? Where are the investors? What are they looking at? What's holding them back?" The plain answer is it is the same factors that held them back 10 or 15 years ago. The only exception was the undesirable infrastructure and real estate boom between 2006 and 2012, which was ridden with corruption and crony capitalism.