The Lost Decade (2008-2018): How India's Growth Story Devolved into Growth without a Story.

• Author: Agrawal, Binit

Mehra, Puja. The Lost Decade (2008-2018): How India's Growth Story Devolved into Growth without a Story. New Delhi: Penguin Random House India, 2019.

In 2008, when the world was reeling under an unprecedented financial crisis, the acclaimed magazine, the Economist, predicted, "India's growing power will reshape the world as we know it. India's real GDP has surged by an annual average of nearly 9 percent in the past five years" ("India's future," Economist, Sept. 29, 2008). More than a decade later, what remains is nothing close to the predictions made in that article. Today, the pre-COVID-19 GDP growth rate of India is an unimpressive 4.2 percent, with negative growth rate a near certainty post--COVID-19. This economic slowdown has been worsened by a bad debt problem, a rural economy crisis, a consumption slowdown, a rise in unemployment, and a surge in inequality. Puja Mehra, an accredited economic journalist, relies on economic evidence, political events, personal anecdotes, and her journalistic insight to tell us how this came to be. Trying to untangle the...