If it's not working why not try voodoo economics?

"India's economy reported its weakest growth in more than six years at 5% in the June quarter and slowed for the sixth straight quarter, prompting the government to unleash a spate of stimulus measures to spur economic activity," wrote AR Misra. Economic growth is a measure of our gross domestic product (GDP) which is measured in rupees but expressed in dollars. While the size of our GDP was fifth in the world in 2017 it has been pushed down to seventh spot in 2018. On 4 July, the day before the Budget, 1 US dollar bought 68.74 rupees, but today, the dollar/rupee exchange rate has fallen to 71.73, a fall of 4%. Which means, the GDP has grown just 1% in dollar terms. "Private consumption expenditure further decelerated to an 18-quarter low of 3.1% in the June quarter, while investment demand picked up slightly at 4% from 3.6% in the preceding 3 months." "The near collapse of manufacturing growth at 0.6% in the June quarter against 3.1% growth in the preceding three months also reveal the dismal state of the industrial sector." With the government panicking "there have been attempts by various industry bodies to extract as much stimulus as possible from the government, and some of them have succeeded in extracting concessions", wrote Prof Himanshu. But, "While the government agreed to open up its purse to buy new four-wheelers for its officers, it did not occur to it that the real crisis is out in the countryside, where most are struggling to maintain essential consumption." Dismissing "professional pessimists" The Prime Minister has promised that India will become a $5 trillion economy by 2024. "The country will need to grow by 9 percent every year for five years continuously and raise aggregate investment rate to 38 percent of GDP to achieve Prime Minister Narandra Modi's target of turning India into a USD 5 trillion economy, EY has said." How to achieve that? Reforms, say economists. "We need a new set of reforms, which energise the private sector to invest. Sops, stimulus of one kind or another are not going to be that useful in the longer-term especially given the very tight fiscal situation that we have." said Prof R Rajan. Had our industries been genuinely competitive they would have compensated for a drop in domestic demand by "diverting sales to the vast export market, which was worth $740 billion in 2017", wrote Prof A Panagariya. Loss making industries should be allowed to fail. That will mean job losses and negative publicity. Votes are precious, taxpayer money is cheap. Prof VA Nageswaran suggests "reform of factor markets -- land and labor, primarily". Rahul Gandhi's jibe of "Suit Boot ki Sarkar" stopped Modi in his tracks the last time he tried such reforms. Blaming the present slowdown on demonetization in 2016, P Chakravarty of the Congress wrote "India's economy now needs some version of 'Nyay', the minimum income guarantee proposal of the Congress". Subsidies mean that spending by the taxpayer is transferred to the poor. How that increases GDP is a mystery. Perhaps, we need a dose of voodoo economics.