Indians are highly susceptible to bromide.

"We have retained our growth for the current financial year at -7.6 percent, but there are signs, beginning in late November of a stronger economic recovery. Our 2021-22 GDP growth forecast is at 11 percent plus," wrote Saugata Bhattacharya. Based on "signals from an extensive set of 39 leading and concurrent indicators which we track," show that "economic activity has pretty much come back to pre-lockdown levels". First, half of electricity "demand is from industry, suggesting that activity has accelerated across all geographies". "India's power consumption grew by 6.1 percent 107.3 billion units (BU) in December, showing spurt in economic activities, according to official data." But, "Power producers' total dues owed by distribution firms rose over 35 percent to Rs 1,41,621 crore (Rs 1.41621 trillion) in November 2020, reflecting stress in the sector." Second, "Mumbai, a weather vane of overall housing demand, recorded a massive increase in registrations (and hence sales) of housing units." "The last few months have seen the luxury home buyers making a comeback after the pandemic enforced lockdown made many buyers defer their buying decisions." The Maharashtra government has earned Rs 3.67 billion by reducing stamp duty on real estate by 3%, from 6% to 3%. Since properties in Mumbai are the most expensive in India, a 3% reduction in tax amounts to considerable savings, and this, along with negative real interest rate, is a great incentive for the wealthy to invest in real estate. However, "Housing sales in the national capital region (Delhi-NCR) plunged 50 percent year-on-year during the 2020 calendar year to 21,234 units on low demand," and "sales of residential properties fell 37 percent to 1,54,534 units in 2020 across eight major cities as compared with 2,45,861 units in the previous year". Third, "digitalisation and big-tech developments of the last few years". "The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) initiative is a technology induced step in improving financial inclusion among other stated goals," wrote R Narayanan and S Dhorajiwala. "More importantly, the workers/beneficiaries have rarely been consulted regarding their preferred mode of transacting. This has created new forms of corruption as has been recently evidenced in the massive scholarship scam in Jharkhand, where many poor students were deprived of their scholarships owing to a nexus of middlemen, government officials, banking correspondents and others. These exclusions are digitally induced." If recovery is broad-based why has unemployment rate risen "sharply to 9.1 percent in December 2020, highest since the beginning of India's recovery from lockdown in June, the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said on Monday". Why tell people they are better off when clearly they are much worse off? Because bromide works. In India.