The Bitter Truth

There is an old adage which goes something like this "What you most wish for and what you most fear of , both will come TRUE ". You may doubt the first part but certainly would agree with the second . I believe in most the cases it holds good but some souls may disagree .So leave them aside and let's face the truth. In this period of recession one activity is quite common . Every other person is coming with their own set of predictions about the growth of economy during the next one year . Some people even dared to say that India won't be effected much by this downturn and would register a growth of over 7% . I don't know the basis of their audacious claims but found one thing common between them and that was UPA . I can understand the obvious as the lok sabha elections are round the corner and they don't want to disappoint the "aam aadmi" . But how long can you fool people in this world ? Surely not long enough . The results for the last fiscal Oct-DEC were announced some days back and the truth was unfortunately out before the public . India had clocked a growth rate of 5.3% amid this slowdown . Now the figure is not too bad but definitely way below claimed predictions . If the last result is anything to go by ,one can only expect whatwill be the results for the current fiscal when it would be announced . Definitely this slowdown has taken it's toll on the booming growth .

The crashing sensex reflects the mindset of the investors and depicts how sceptic have they become . Rupee depreciation is another cause of concern which is currently trading at 52 against dollar .Three stimulus packages have already been announced by the UPA government since December 2008 to give some boost to this sagging economy . Lately excise duty and service tax were cut by 2% each . This would certainly leave more in the hands of the consumers and would help in increasing the demand . Now since the election dates have come out no more such packages can be announced by the UPA government as per the restrictions laid down by the EC . So the only body which can act now is the RBI and it didn't disappoint either . It reduced the repo and reverse repo rate - both by 50 basis points . Now this would certainly help in retaining more money with the banks itself . This has been done so that banks lend more and help in spurring the demand . But of late banks have been accused of hoarding as this is not going to serve the purpose .The forex reserve has too come down by more than $50 bn in fighting this downturn . The only positive thing is the constant decreasing inflation . The placements of top B-schools of India like IIM-A,XLRI, IIFT have been hit by this slowdown . Earlier placing all it's students used to be a matter of 4-5 days but this year the case is quite different with extended placement season .The students are not in demanding position anymore and are settling for a low salary packages than last year . The kind of profiles offered are also missing this year . And the people from finance department are finding it too tough .

Don't know when this world would come out of this gloomy situation .Everybody is facing the heat and are doing everything to save their job be it Citibank CEO Vikram Pandit or a common man . So the common solution for this common problem is that everybody has to work hard . We need to put in the combined effort and then only this situation will improve or can hope to improve .