India’s GDP falls by almost 24% in the second quarter

The alarming fall in India’s GDP (nearly 24%) in the second quarter is being touted as the biggest hit to Indian growth which is worse than expected. This comes after a nationwide lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic which was imposed by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24, 2020. India’s economy contracted by an annualised 23.9 per cent in the quarter at the end of June. With an estimated 140m job losses, the government’s attitude towards this fall is being heavily critiqued. “This confirms what we have been saying for a long time; India’s lockdown was the harshest and inflicted a huge economic cost,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia Economics at Oxford Economics. “This GDP data confirms the extent of the cost.” Naushad Forbes, chairman of engineer Forbes Marshall, called the data “the worst performance in our history”.  If this continues, India is soon expected to surpass Brazil in terms of cumulative cases, second only to the US. The official death toll is 65,000.