Crisis? What crisis?

It is very puzzling how economists seem to live in a state of denial all the time. Maybe that is why they can never predict any crisis that hit the world regularly. For years everyone, including the World Famous Economist, has been denying that the Indian economy is in deep trouble, arguing about decimal points on the growth rate, when it is obvious that it is sinking. Now suddenly people are talking about a crisis when the November Industrial Production has come in at -2.1%. " It is disappointing that growth is so lacklustre despite a favorable base effect and festival demand," a note from India Ratings said and added that " sustained and high inflation appears to be acting as a spoiler ". What it is saying that growth was low last year, giving us a low base, but industrial production has fallen even lower than that. They seem surprised that it is because of inflation. India is not an exporting nation. Helped by a weaker rupee our exports rose by 3.49% in December to $26.35 billion which means our total export in the financial year will be around $300 billion, an amount that China exports every month. Since our economy is driven by domestic consumption inflation is bound to affect growth by reducing consumption. Surely you do not need a PhD in economics to see that. Car sales fell by 9.6% in 2013, the first time in 11 years. It shows that people are not changing their cars and not enough young people are getting lucrative employment. It also has a knock on effect on dealers, manufacturers of components and transporters. The reason we are in such trouble is only because the Congress wasted trillions of rupees on social schemes to buy votes to win elections, running up huge fiscal deficits, causing inflation and then pressuring the Reserve Bank not to increase interest rates. But surely distributing handouts to the rural poor, plus generous monsoons, will increase their buying power and thus increase demand? Seems that rural folk are also choosing to spend carefully. The world is full of examples of how excessive social spending causes inflation and increases poverty because it is not productive and diverts funds from productive infrastructure projects. See Venezuela, an oil producer, and Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of Africa. Are all economists blind?