The good side of 'depression'

There are recessions and there are depressions and even the know-all economists cannot tell one from the other. But I have a simple definition: when your next-door neighbour loses his job, it is recession; when you lose your job, it is depression. We had one of our longest depressions - depression with capital D - in the 30s, just before the last world war, though we in India didn't know it. Very few people lost their jobs because there were not that many jobs to lose anyway. There were few industries - textiles mills, most of them in Bombay and Ahmedabad - a handful of sugar factories and of course, jute mills in Calcutta. Our real big industry, if you can tell it that, was farming but it was in such a bad shape, it wa

This article was originally published on October 02, 2021.