Indian Economy: Pre- and Post-COVID-19 by Dr Arvind Panagariya
Channel: Ashoka Economics Society
Date: 2022-01-27

Indian economy was hit hard by COVID-19 pandemic with GDP declining 7.3% in 2020-21 and barely returning to pre-Covid-19 level of 2019-20 in 2021-22.  Has this shock permanently damaged India's chances of achieving 7 to 8% growth? Far from it.  There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the economy.  India's reforms of the 1990s and early 2000s have remained intact and several additional ones have been introduced in recent years.  Once the pandemic is behind us, robust growth that would sustain for one to two decades will resume.

This talk was delivered by Dr Arvind Panagariya, who is a Padma Bhushan recipient, currently the Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy at Columbia University. From 2015 to 2017, he served as both the first Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog and India’s G20 Sherpa. He is also the former Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank. Dr Panagariya has authored more than fifteen books including "India: The Emerging Giant" (2008, OUP, New York), which was listed as a top pick of 2008 by The Economist and described as the “definitive book on the Indian economy”. He writes a monthly column in the Times of India and his guest columns have appeared in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and India Today.