Just take the top 10%.

In India and the US, "the top 10% of the consumers are holding up consumption," while "the others are pinching pennies, two different reports have argued." During Covid, "the revival of the Indian economy was achieved through aggressive government spending, it doubled the fiscal deficit between FY20 and FY21, eventually in a rise in money supply." This, along with surging personal credit, pushed inflation up. In the US, "the top 10% consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending," while others are cutting their spending because of inflation. ET. However, the economic impact of Covid was handled in diametrically opposite ways by India and the US. In India, the Rs 20 trillion stimulus was mainly in the form of loans and economists calculated that the actual cash outgo of the government was only Rs 2 trillion or 1% of our Rs 211 trillion GDP. DH. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed consumer price index (CPI) inflation to run at over 6% (RI) by keeping its policy rate unchanged at 4% for 24 months from 22 May 2020 (BT) till 4 May 2022, when it hiked the interest rate by 40 basis points in an emergency meeting (ET). The US government transferred a total of $814 billion directly to households in three rounds, in March 2020, in December 2020 and in March 2021. Pandemic Oversight. Annual CPI inflation rose to 3% in January from 2.9% in December (CNBC) while the personal consumption index (PCE) rose by 2.5% and the core PCE, excluding food and energy, was at 2.6% annually, down from 2.9% in December (CNBC). The year-on-year CPI inflation in India came in at 4.31% (provisional) in January 2025. pib.gov.in. The RBI's Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH) in September 2024 showed that 74.4% of households expected inflation to remain the same or rise over three months, causing the middle class, earning Rs 50-100,000 per month, to cut expenses or switch to cheaper alternatives, wrote Deepa Vasudevan. Indian consumers have been borrowing to finance their spending, so that total borrowing of households has increased 56% to Rs 120 trillion by March 2024 from Rs 77 trillion in June 2021, from 41% of GDP to 42.9% of GDP. Rising interest payments and rising prices have subdued consumer spending. Mint. "India's fiscal deficit for the first 10 months of this fiscal year through January stood at Rs 11.70 trillion, or 74.5% of annual estimates," compared to 63.6% a year earlier. ET. To deal with the internal and external economic challenges, retired IAS officer Mr Shaktikanta Das has been appointed the second Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India Today. Mr Das was the Governor of the RBI from 12 December 2018 to 11 December 2024 (wikipedia) and helped the government during Covid by tolerating CPI inflation in excess of 6%. He was appointed shortly after the disastrous demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 banknotes on 8 November 2018 which turned out to be "a failure of epic proportions" (BBC). Right man for the job. When India and the US are so similar.