A lot has changed since 1608, and yet so similar.

"India is witnessing a 'V' shaped recovery, the finance ministry said on Friday, pointing to a clutch of indicators such as manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI), auto sales, railway freight, steel and power consumption, e-way bills, highways toll and retail financial transactions." Trouble is, "The Indian economy was in one of its worst ever deceleration phases even before the pandemic," wrote Roshan Kishore. "It (growth) was 8.2% in March 2018 and fell to 3.1% in March 2020." "In 2019-20, Private Final Consumption Expenditure (PFCE) had a share of 57% in India's GDP." "PFCE growth collapsed to 2.7% in the March 2020 quarter", which meant that Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF), which is an indicator for new investment, "contracted at an increasing rate for three consecutive quarters ending March 2020". With no new investment, "The unemployment rate, which has been falling so far after scaling a peak of 23.5% in April and May, increased from 7.4% in July to 8.4% in August," the number of unemployed increasing from 32 to 36 million. If India is to "lift large swathes of its population out of poverty", "McKinsey Global Institute estimates that India will need to create at least 90 million non-farm jobs by 2030, if it is to absorb all the young workers that enter its labor market," wrote BBC's Nikhil Inamdar. This is the time of Hindu festivals in India, starting with Raksha Bandhan on 3 August, Ganesh Chaturthi which is very big in Gujarat and Maharashtra, Onam celebrated in the South, Durga Puja in Bengal, the East and Nepal, Diwali, and Chath Puja in Bihar and UP. Around 30% of two-wheeler sales have come in the festival months in the last 10 years, and 35-40% of consumer durables are sold during this period, wrote Vivek Kaul. Around 35 million jobs have been lost in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector and salaried jobs had fallen from 86 million in 2019-20 to 67 million by July 2020, a fall of 19 million, so that a "psychology of recession has set in. Even those individuals who have jobs have seen others get laid off and want to save more for a rainy day. Businesses have also lost their appetite to expand and invest". Our "financial sector hasn't been healthy for most part of a decade", wrote Prof Viral V Acharya. Because it is routinely jettisoned "for myopic adjustments in government expenditures; the need for such adjustments is accentuated at specific points of the electoral cycle when economic growth must be postured as being high". "This is achieved by governments seeking concessions from financial regulators, notably RBI (Reserve Bank)". The government controls the RBI through "the colonial-era RBI Act, which provides sweeping powers to the government of India (GOI)", so that, the RBI was "more independent during the British Raj than in independent India". Admirers of British rule over India say that "most Indians were poor and oppressed by their own leaders before the British arrived, and that British rule was less harsh on ordinary Indians than rule by Indian princes". The British arrived in India on 24 August 1608. We have just replaced princes with politicians and the ICS by the IAS. Nothing has really changed.