Is India's GDP a Gasping Elephant or a Tortoise?

Sajjan Jindal the Chairman of JSW Steel told the Economic Times, “This is truly a missed opportunity, at a time when the whole world is looking to invest in developing economies; internal issues have plagued our nation.” Though the government claims that it is trying to woo the foreign investors it is surprising to know the committee on trade and industry headed by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just met twice in two years. The first meeting was a preliminary meeting where five sub-committees were set up on issues like skill development and financial inclusion and the second meeting was focused on the global crisis and inflation.

In a report by one of the U.K. newspapers the Indian economy was referred to as a “tortoise” which has been changed from the previous comparison of “elephant”. Leif Lybecker Eskesen the chief economist for India at HSBC said that India has turned into a “gasping elephant”. All these names like tortoise and gasping elephant is like downgrading the Indian economy but it’s not their fault as the GDP is running below everyone’s expectations.

Eswar Prasad an economist at the Brookings Institution and Cornell told The New York Times, “The latest growth numbers signal India’s deteriorating economic prospects and presage much worse to come as industrial output has stalled and investment is falling. These numbers reflect not just a loss of economic momentum but, far worse, a loss of confidence in the government’s ability to tackle the enormous short-term and long-term challenges to sustaining growth.”