Third quarter growth decelerated to 4.7 per cent, slowest in seven years. Growth in the same December quarter in 2018 was 5.6 per cent. Manufacturing is reported to be the main cause, though overall sentiment continues to be weak. The National Statistical Office projects the overall growth for 2019-20 at 5 percent as against 6.1 per cent in the previous year. However, the Government is optimistic about a quick turnaround, claiming growth in agriculture, services and eight core industries in the manufacturing sector augurs well for the pick-up. Financial sector too has recovered after the recent troubles. Services, which accounts for over 60 per cent of the economy, have registered a 6 per cent growth. Though consumer spending is weak, government spending at 13.2 per cent and 11.8 per cent in the second and third quarters respectively of the current financial has spurred overall growth. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other economic policy-makers have been talking of ‘green shoots’ sprouting to lend weight to the claim that the worst may be behind us. World Bank and IMF too see a minor blip on the growth radar for India in the next financial. India’s top industrialist Mukesh Ambani is also of the opinion that the slowdown is cyclical and that the economy is back on the growth track. Whether the slowdown has bottomed out will be known when the figures for the current quarter come in. But the on-going coronavirus epidemic has already cast a big shadow on the global economic order with the Chinese economy set to suffer at least a 1 per cent GDP loss due to the widespread disruption. Consequently, the disruption in global supply chains will have a spiraling effect on major world economies. Thus far, India has remained unaffected directly by the coronavirus, but given how fast it has spread to Europe, South East Asia, Latin America, etc., India has to remain vigilant and ready to tackle the virus should it hit her shores as well. Meanwhile, India too has been hit badly by the coronavirus-inspired selling wave on the global markets with indices plunging sharply from New York, Tokyo, Seoul and Frankfurt to London in the last few days. In sympathy with the world markets, the BSE Sensex has sunk on six straight sessions, shedding nearly 4,000 points overall from the high of over 42,000 in the third week of January. The fact that all major world economies are now in the grip of a slowdown, it will be hard for India to register a substantial boost in exports, though post-coronovirus if handled wisely India can attract some of the major western export units now being re-located from China. Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand have stepped in to net further business in the wake of the epidemic but India lags behind. Unless government steps in to make exports labour and cost competitive by undertaking requisite changes in laws and by tamping down on corruption and ingrained inefficiencies in the system, smaller South East Asian countries will remain bigger magnets for foreign buyers. A lot needs to be done to spur growth but the Indian economy is like the proverbial elephant which must rumble along at its own leisurely pace while smaller economies outpace us.
Courting publicity
Judges playing to the gallery can distort justice and fair-play. Take for instance the case of Justice S Muralidhar. While hearing a PIL by civil rights activists last week, he virtually ordered an on-the-spot registration of FIRs against three BJP leaders for their alleged hate speeches in the backdrop of the on-going communal strife in north-east Delhi. The good judge ignored pleas that instant registration of FIRs selectively will not be conducive to the restoration of normalcy when the tempers on both sides were still high. Judge Muralidhar knew he was already under transfer to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, and it was his last working day in Delhi, he wanted to go in a trail of glory. Next day, when a bench headed by Chief Justice D N Patel resumed hearing on the same PIL, after hearing both sides, it granted the police a month to lodge FIRs after assessing all hate speeches and not just by the three BJP leaders. But the upshot of that instant display of one-sided judicial angst was that Judge Muralidhar was given a hero’s farewell by the local Bar with some even imputing motives behind his transfer, which the judge himself had let it be known was routine and that he was going on promotion. So what can be gauged from this little drama of grandstanding by a High Court judge? That judges too are human, vulnerable to the allure of self-promotion. Ideally, judges should speak through their written orders, not through oral remarks which have no bearing on the final orders of the court.
