Six months ago, the country's industrialists and government ministers appeared confident that a growth trajectory as powerful as China's was almost in reach. The “Indian century” had arrived; growth rates stubbornly stuck at 3.5 per cent for decades were forgotten.
Then came the global financial crisis, bringing a liquidity squeeze to India's banks, cooling export demand and taking the shine off even the ?T outsourcing sector, the most polished of transformative growth models.
The Congress party-led government has reluctantly revised down its growth estimate for this year to 7.1 per cent, the slowest for six years. Economists, however, are more pessimistic, challenging the statistics on which the government has made its assumptions and forecasting growth nearer 6 per cent. Citigroup estimates gross domestic product growth at a dismal 5.5 per cent for next year.