 India is the fastest growing major economy in the world right now and in the last fiscal, which is 2021-22, our economy, our GDP grew at the highest pace in 22 years. That is what you must have read in the papers, that is what mainstream news anchors must have been telling you, whether these are the pundits, the economists, columnists, they're all celebrating India's recovery. But have we really recovered? Just a few charts would tell you the real story. Let's start with the first one and that is GDP growth. And I'm taking real GDP here and the numbers that I'm giving you are going to be in lakh crore rupees. So here is India's actual GDP since 2000 to 2021-22. Compared to last year, our GDP has grown by 8.7%. This is the highest growth rate in many, many years. You have to remember that last year was a COVID year and because of this, our GDP fell and therefore this growth might be a little illusory and you can see that when I draw the line compared to 2019-20. Then you see that over a two-year period, the growth has been just 1.5% or an average of just 0.7%. Let's compare what our GDP should have been if it had grown at the same rate it was growing till before COVID hit us. And this red line tells you that our potential GDP. That point at the arrow is where our GDP should have been if it had grown at the same rate as it was doing till 2019-20 or before COVID. Compared to that, we're currently 12% behind which means our GDP hasn't really recovered. We're still 12% behind what our growth path should have been. Now, let me take up the case of private final consumption expenditure. This is a technical term you'll see whenever GDP numbers are given. This is essentially what we spend on our consumption. What households spend on consumption. And here are the major items in which consumption takes place. And I'm showing you a total spending of 1000 rupees in the breakup of that. So bread, cereals and pulses that would be about 63 rupees approximately 6%. Milk and milk products 58 rupees out of 1000 rupees spent. Fruits and vegetables 68 rupees out of 1000 rupees spent. Clothing and footwear 59 rupees. Housing, electricity, gas and water. This is a big item 142 rupees out of 1000 or about 14%. And next again, furnishing household equipment and other regular household expenditure, non-food expenditure that is 33 rupees out of 1000 or about 3%. Transport and communication that's the biggest part. 192 rupees out of 1000 or about 19%. Health and education, another big item 83 rupees or 8%. Together, these account for 70% of the private final consumption expenditure of Indian households. And what has happened? Let's take a look at what has happened when it comes to private final consumption expenditure. And again, these numbers are in lakh crore. Take a look at this, the actual expenditure dropped in 2020-21 because of COVID. And here is what the potential expenditure should have been where we should have been. And again, there's a gap of 12%. We are 12% below what our consumption should have been compared to the glide path or the pattern that we've seen till COVID hit us. This is of course overall private final consumption expenditure which does not take into account that the population has also been growing. So what I've done is that I've taken these numbers and divided it by the estimated population for each year. And let's look at what that looks like. Here is the per capita final consumption expenditure. In 2019-20, it was approximately 61,600 rupees per person. This dropped in 2020-21 because of COVID and dropped to just 57,300. And it has picked up in 2021-22. But it is still below as you can see the 2019-20 figure by 400 rupees on an average. So we haven't recovered when it comes to average consumption. Now let's look at what has the gross value added in the most important sectors which employ the most people because gross value added by each employee gives us a broad proxy for what they would have been earning from those sectors. Now the biggest employers are agriculture which is about 36-40% of all employment. Then comes I've clubbed it together because the GDP numbers also club it together. Trade, hotels, transport and communication which is about 21-22% of all employment is in this particular grouped sector. And then there is construction and real estate which is 15-16%. And the rest of the data that I'm going to give you is from CMI as is this employment data. All together these combined account for 72-78% of the bulk of our employment. I'm going to keep agriculture out but let's look at the two other key spaces where employment is created and look at gross value added in these sectors per employee. And here are the numbers. Value added per employee in trade, hotels, transport and communication which I said has a lot of employees. In 2019-20 it was about 3 lakh rupees per person, all right? Gross value added in these sectors. Now obviously this does not mean that those who are employed here are getting an average of this because this includes profit etc. which is going to those who own capital in these sectors. Then it dropped in 2020-21 because of COVID and dropped to just 2.5 lakh rupees on an average. Gross value added. What happened this year? It has risen but it has just risen to 270,000 which means we're still way below about 10% below the 2019-20 level when it comes to gross value added per employee in some of the most important sectors. In construction in real estate and here I'm again going to use the employment data from CMI and the government's value added data. In 2019-20 on an average the value added per employee was 1,70,000 in the construction space. Now remember construction has been slowing down for a long time so even in 2019-20 this number is not great which is why even after COVID the decline was not that huge a drop to on an average of 1,67,000 per employee. What happened this year? Was there a massive jump? No. In 2021-22 we have remained absolutely static. The average value added per employee in construction has been static. These are the charts which tell you the real picture of how people have been affected, how their incomes have been affected, the sectors which employ the most number of people, how they have been affected and that is the real story behind these GDP numbers. Recovery is far, far away. That's the show today. Keep watching News Click. Do subscribe to our channel and like this video and share it as well.