Eating out and GDP growth

Is there a straight connection between eating out and economic growth? Why is it that the number of fancy restaurants goes up when GDP rises and goes down when it sinks? 30 years ago when I started living in my Delhi colony, there was no proper restaurant worth the name, although the place was only a couple of miles from the prime minister's house. That was the time of the Hindu rate of growth and very few people went or could afford to go to restaurants. Now there are at least a dozen eating places, one posher than the other and though I do not see the prime minister in any of them, I do come across a few ministers having a whale of a time dining on sushi and

This article was originally published on December 19, 2021.