Waiting for the mirage of sunlit uplands.

"Nobody wants to be told over and over again what's wrong with their country and its people, especially when much of it is untrue," wrote Prof V Anantha Nageswaran. "They want to be inspired and led to the sunlit uplands." Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised "shonar bangla", which means 'golden Bengal', while campaigning for assembly elections in west Bengal. Four people were shot dead by central forces in Cooch Behar for alleged violence. State BJP leader Rahul Sinha said four was not enough, eight people should have been shot. The good news is, "Among 210 countries, India ranks 120 in deaths per million and 125 in cases per million," said Nageswaran. "Around 31% of almost 4.5 lakh (450,000) people who took antibody tests for Covid-19 across India from July-December last year tested positive, according to a new study analysing data from a chain of private labs," reported Times of India. "Seropositivity, as this is known rose from 18% in July to 46.5% in December and was slightly higher in females -- 35% compared to 30% -- than in males, reports Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar." Surveys of households suggest all-cause mortality doubled between May and August last year, wrote Rukmini S. While other countries publish up-to-date mortality data, "In India, however, the end of 2020 did not mean that data for this crucial year would now be available -- the most recent national all-cause mortality data is for 2018." "The most striking feature of India's second wave of infections has been the speed at which the numbers have been growing," wrote Amitabh Sinha. "Amid surging pandemic cases forcing many states to curb mobility and businesses, a report has said these localised lockdowns in key economic hubs can cost the economy an average of USD 1.25 billion each week and may shave off 140 bps from the Q1 nominal GDP." The Reserve Bank (RBI) has taken preemptive action. Although it expects retail inflation to stay around 5%, it has kept the repo rate unchanged at 4%. It has also announced a bond buying plan of up to Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 1 trillion) to keep bond yields, at which the government borrows from the market, at below 6.25%, wrote Ajit Ranade. "RBI is now merely following a precedent set by the US Federal Reserve, followed by the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan." Comparing with these economies is downright silly because the US is expecting its inflation rate to rise to 2.4% year-on-year (y-o-y), reported Reuters. "Euro area annual inflation is expected to be 1.3% in March 2021, up from 0.9% in February 2021," according to Eurostat, while in Japan consumer prices have been declining since October 2020. In India, on the other hand, retail inflation came in at 5.52% in March, reported Business Standard. Indian economists believe that every problem of India's economy can be solved by keeping interest rates as low as possible, never mind that real negative interest rates impoverish savers who rely on interest from fixed deposits in banks. Inflation targeting (IT) policy was associated with the highest real repo rates in India from 2017-2019 and were "the primary cause of the GDP growth decline in India from 8 percent (pre-IT) to 5 percent (post-IT), according to economist SS Bhalla. Low interest rates are supposed to encourage higher borrowing for new investments, wrote Ranade. "Currently, credit growth is barely 6% overall", while we need credit to grow at 20% to produce high GDP growth. "India's own experience since 1990s is that high interest rates have not deterred animal spirits and robust investment growth." Sunlit uplands are a mirage.