The economy has recently been yielding some discomfiting data, even before the war in West Asia began. The most recent of these was the February 2026 data on the Index of Eight Core Industries. As a matter of fact, a large part of the contraction in domestic production was likely because imports were coming cheap. Permanently reducing such dependence will take time, but a temporary domestic production push — as is belatedly underway — might have considerably alleviated the current supply crunch. This poor core sector performance comes on top of the new series of GDP data showing that the Indian economy is actually smaller than previously thought.

Source: The Hindu March 24, 2026 08:51 UTC