We hope, but we can't be sure.

"All is well when economic growth is high and inflation is low," wrote A Iyer. "The Index of Industrial Production grew by 7.47% in January, with manufacturing maintaining its impressive pace of expansion at 8.69%." Retail inflation fell to 4.44% in February from 5.07% in January. Wholesale inflation fell to 2.48% in February, the lowest in 7 months. Stock market indices in India have been brought down by public sector banks which are yet to clear bad loans from their books. Bad loans may amount to Rs 9.5 trillion, or more, as banks are forced to write them down by the Reserve Bank. Unwilling to lend to industry, banks have resorted to lending to individuals. Most of the retail loans are unsecured which makes them highly risky, wrote A Iyer. Out of "every Rs 100 worth of retail loan that banks lent between April and January of 2017-18, nearly Rs 50 went towards unsecured personal loans. Add credit card outstandings and it swells to Rs 80." The GDP grew by 7.2% in the third quarter and core Gross Value Added grew by 7.4%. Consumer spending is getting weaker but investment is increasing, though most of it is brown field and not green field investment. Why is investment increasing when consumer spending is not growing as strongly? It can only be due to increasing exports. But, India's exports of goods and services are stagnant, even though other Asian nations have picked up smartly as growth has quickened in the global economy. As a share of GDP exports are at the same level as they were in the September quarter in 2005. "If the relationship between between India's exports and world growth returns to that in the boom phase, and if world growth in 2018 is as projected by the IMF, then it could add another 0.5 percentage point to growth," said the last Economic Survey. True, but the Services Purchasing Managers' Index fell to 47.8 in February from 51.7 in January. Anything below 50 shows a contraction. Imports of electronic goods, especially mobile phones, are rising inexorably. The cost of such imports has risen to nearly $50 billion in the first 9 months of the financial year, coming close to the cost of our oil imports. The figures, especially the increase in sales of consumer durables, indicate that the economy is beginning to grow again, wrote AR Mishra. Maybe not, wrote SP Mampatta. The asset turnover ratio, which is the ratio of net sales for every Rs 100 worth of fixed assets, has dropped to 1.95 from 2.94 between 2006 to 2016. Which means that Rs 100 worth of fixed assets now generate net sales worth Rs 195, compared to Rs 294 in the previous decade. Something is growing, but we don't know what it is. So, we hope.