India maybe forced to catch the falling knife.

"I have a sneaking suspicion that doomsayers, especially the well-meaning ones, are in a state of wishful thinking, and would actually like a full-blown international macroeconomic crisis as in 1991; For, they believe, that is what will take to jump-start serious economic reforms," wrote Prof Vivek Dahejia. "However, in my judgement, these well-wishers, hoping for a crisis, are going to be disappointed." Hard to imagine that this article was written on 9 March, the day on which the Dow Jones Industrial average fell 2,000 points, only to be outdone by a 2,300 points or 10% crash yesterday,  "triggering thresholds that paused market activity on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in pre-market trading and immediately after opening bell", wrote Lucy Bayly. "It was the worst point drop ever for the Dow and its worst performance since the market crash in 1987." "As the expression goes on Wall Street, nobody wants to try to catch a falling knife," wrote Steven Pearlstein. "But it's even worse than that when most of these stocks, bonds and derivatives have been purchased with borrowed money. The wiseguys who now dominate the daily trading on Wall Street -- hedge funds and private equity funds -- typically put down $1 or $2 of their own and their investors' money for every $10 worth of securities they purchase." As prices fall lenders sell off stocks to get their money back, leading to a vicious cycle of falling prices, more selling, leading to more falls. India's economy was slowing down even before the global crisis due to the coronavirus. Private consumption expenditure, which contributes about 60% of the gross domestic product (GDP), sales of cars and two-wheelers, number of airline and train passengers and tax collections are all down, wrote Vivek Kaul. "While the rate of growth is the slowest in over six years", "What is truly unnerving is that the Q1 and Q2 numbers of the current year have been revised dramatically, and, what is worse, they have been revised out of turn," wrote Latha Venkatesh. This government is known for its proficiency in cooking data to conceal its economic failures. Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani wants global agencies to "set the India story right, and in proper context". The minister should be concerned that the labor force participation rate for women is dropping and large numbers are still dropping out of school to do domestic chores. "The Indian economy will continue to muddle along for the foreseeable future, neither doing brilliantly well nor doing disastrously poorly," wrote Dehejia. We missed the upside because of poor policies, the downside may not be in our hands. We maybe forced to catch the falling knife.