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Impact of the Pandemic on Growth of the States
The slump and recovery in growth varied substantially and adversely affected disparate states.
Though the impact of the pandemic on the national economy has been widely discussed, its repercussions on the state-level growth, however, has been largely ignored. This is mainly due to the time lag in the compilation of the gross state domestic product (GSDP) data. However, the lacuna has been now filled by the recent Handbook of Statistics on Indian States, published by the Reserve Bank of India. It highlights the sharp variations of the slump in growth across disparate states in the first year of the pandemic and in the subsequent recovery.
What is surprising is that, at the national level, the trends in the GSDP data are not fully in tandem with the movement of the gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP growth slumped from 3.7% in 2019–20 to -6.6% in 2020–21 and then recovered to 8.7% in 2021–22. The states’ GSDP data, compiled for 32 states and union territories, show a more limited fall from 4.4% in 2019–20 to -3.4% in 2020–21.