Newslaundry Podcast

In this week’s episode, host Abhinandan Sekhri is joined by Madhu Trehan, Raman Kirpal, Anand Vardhan, and journalist and author Puja Mehra.The podcast kicks off with a deconstruction of Mehra’s book, The Lost Decade (2008-18): How India's Growth Story Devolved into Growth Without a Story. Abhinandan asks Puja why she believed that the decade was indeed lost. In response, she says both Prime Ministers (Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi) were equally responsible for ineffectively dealing with the crisis. She also states that temporary emergency measures were relied upon to compensate for a mammoth crisis that demanded a permanent solution.She adds, “When an economy grows at that rate [8.8 per cent GDP growth] and is hit by a crisis, a shock, to bring it back to that level you need to take some steps. That follow-through was not undertaken.” When Abhinandan asks her if she believed that the Modi government’s economic agenda was cemented in a cultural singularity, she says that the government’s attitude is more s