Middle income India orchestrates the great economic fightback

Rural India have reported a great revival and the signs of this growth are visible in important sectors like airline travel, hotel bookings and vehicles sales.

There's no news like good news and as the Indian economy is getting its bearings, while staving off the damage

wrought upon it by the pandemic, the middle class and rural India are pitching in on a war footing to stand up and be counted as stakeholders in this great Indian economic revival.

Middle class India is aggressive about laying down its credentials and the signs are showing. The farming community, coming off a great monsoon and bumper crops, are celebrating brags of their own.

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Encouraging revival in air travel, hotel bookings by small business owners are a testimony to rising incomes. The government endorsed these signs with data which suggests that the economy shrank 7.5% in the July-September quarter, performing better than analysts′ expectation of an 8.8% contraction as lockdowns were eased and some pent-up demand was met. In the April-June period, the economy shrank 23.9%.

Annual progress of 3.4% in farm sector and 0.6% in manufacturing during the September quarter has raised prospects of an early recovery and service sectors such as trade, hotels and transport contracted at a much slower pace compared with the April-June period.

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A spike in goods and services, tax collections and higher energy consumption are examples which support the facts and this dovetails into positive consumer behaviour where farmers, cashing in on their bumper crops this year have invested in tractors tractors and personal vehicles recognizing that the lack of public transport needs to be addressed with safer travel options which, in turn, has increased sales of motorcycles and cars.

Yes, a recovery is slowly being crafted in the Indian economy and the signs are there to decode. The manufacturing sector which took a brutal battering in the July quarter has orchestrated a well planned fightback. Airlines too are winning little battles that suggest that there are signs of life yet given that since the end of May, when the government lifted a ban on flights, monthly domestic passenger traffic has more than doubled from 2 million in June to over 5 million in October. It may still be down from roughly 12 million recorded a year ago, but there is no denying that the monitor is ticking.

To accentuate the point India′s biggest carrier IndiGo NSE -1.96 % and rival Vistara are seeing a small, but valuable, uptick in business travel. And much of this traffic is being driven by the SME's who are stepping out to do business and crossing borders to cash in on opportunities that are now present.

MakeMyTrip, the online travel entity released data which showed that SMEs have contributed to a 35% to 40% recovery in hotel bookings compared with pre-COVID times and between 27% and 32% recovery in flights.

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And what about the humble, but powerful Indian farmer The farming community are laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to a confidence enhancing harvest, and there are many such positive examples of this. Tractor makers Mahindra & Mahindra are particularly pleased that the positivity in this sector is being reflected in solid sales for them. As are Maruti Suzuki who had a 10% growth in rural sales between July and September versus a 4% rise overall, led by small, entry-level models.