"Hopefully, no own goals will be scored in the future as India continues its reform efforts" – is how a piece published in China's Global Times on Thursday, June 1, taking a jibe at India's economic slowdown concluded.
The daily, which often takes on India on diverse issues, said in the piece titled "India gets nasty surprise from first-quarter growth amid doubts over earlier data" that India seemed to have suffered a setback in the "elephant versus dragon" race as it faced an "unexpected slowdown" in economic terms, helping China to regain the tag of the fastest-growing economy in the January-March quarter. It may be mentioned here that India had overtaken China as the fastest-growing economy in 2015-16.
In a note of caution, the Global Times article said India should desist from putting too much pressure on the economy even while going ahead with "ambitious reforms".
The latest data on economic growth said the Indian economy slowed down to 6.1 per cent in the latest quarter, the weakest in over two years, while China registered a 6.9 per cent growth in the same period. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisation declared on November 8, 2016, was cited as the reason behind it.
"A significant upward revision of last year's growth data for the same period by 1.3 percentage points to 9.2 percent was in part blamed for the comparative slump in India's economic growth in the first quarter this year. But this was supposed to have already been factored into previous market estimates, so why did the growth data still come as such a shock? Adding to the puzzle is that India posted stronger-than-expected 7 percent growth in the October-to-December period when the economy was seen being hit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision in November to scrap largest-denomination banknotes," the Global Times article said.
It also said though an "iron fist" approach to socio-economic reform looks indispensable for the rulers of the country with a federal and multi-party system while striving for development; it is wise to avoid shock treatments since most Indians depend on cash for their daily livelihood.
It said the government of India needs to work out more effective measures to boost private investment, something it termed as a "weak link" in a by consumer-demand and government-spending-driven economy.
