Bouncing back ?

The economic upturn appears to have truly begun. The latest government data on Monday showed the economy growing by 6.1% year-on-year during the first quarter (April-June) of the fiscal—the fastest for any quarter since the global financial crisis began almost a year ago -making officials expect a 6.5% growth this year. This means India remains the second-fastest growing major economy after China, which notched an almost 8% growth rate. More importantly, it’s an improvement over the 5.8% registered by India in the previous quarter and 5.3% recorded in the quarter before that. If there’s a shadow of cloud accompanying this brightening sky it’s the uncertainty about whether the economy can maintain this momentum in the next quarter (and perhaps the one after that) with the agriculture sector getting hit by a poor monsoon.