India’s Economy Shrinks Sharply as Covid-19 Slams Small Businesses

India’s economy shrank 7.5 percent in the three months that ended in September compared with a year earlier, government figures showed on Friday. The data reflects the deepening of India’s severest recession since at least 1996, when the country first began publishing its gross domestic product numbers.

The new figures firmly ensconced India’s position among the world’s worst-performing major economies, despite expansive government spending designed to rescue the thousands of small businesses severely battered by its long, hastily imposed lockdown.

Nikhil Das, a 62-year-old manufacturer of silk ties and scarves in New Delhi, says his business is teetering on the edge of collapse. His sales, which depend on demand from luxury shops and airport retailers, have fallen by four-fifths….