A phenomenon as massive as the
global coronavirus pandemic, which ran from 2020 to 2022, is bound to have
major economic ripple, or wave, effects in its wake. India’s record high 9.2% growth
of GNP in the 2023-2024 fiscal year illustrates the robust thrust of pent-up
demand met with increased supply. To the extent that consumption over savings
is the norm in any economy, a couple years off can subtly recalibrate economic
mentalities to a more prudent economic mindset wherein saving money is not so
dwarfed by spending it. Moreover, putting the brakes on a consumerist routine
and societal norm can theoretically lead to putting the underlying materialism
in a relative rather than an absolute position and thus in perspective.
Yet such a “resetting” must overcome the knee-jerk instinct of any habit to
restart as if there had been no change. Coming back to college, for example,
after a summer away, students tend to pick up their respective routines right
away as if the recent summer were a distant memory. India’s astonishing rate of
economic growth just after the pandemic demonstrates that the penchant for
consumerism and economic growth as a maximizing rather than satisficing variable
returned as if the steeds in Socrates’ Symposium—only those horses represent
garden-variety eros sublimated to love of eternal moral verities, to
which Augustine substituted “God.”
The full essay is at "RBI Overheating India's Economy."
