Infographic: This is what India's economy would look like if it grew by 9%

There used to be a time when India gross domestic product (GDP) used to gallop at an admirable speed of more than 9 percent. But that was about seven years back, before the global credit crisis erupted. Since then, growth has, unfortunately, slowed to a crawl.

Things have only become worse over the past 12 months. In the December-ending quarter, contracting industrial output and an investment slowdown dragged India’s economic growth to a worse-than-expected 4.7 percent. Contributing to the slowdown were weak macro-economic fundamentals, a rising fiscal deficit and high inflation.

In a report, rating agency Crisil offers a dream scenario, outlining what the economy could have achieved if it grew by 9 percent instead of the expected 6.5 percent a year.

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The report says that an economy bounding ahead by 9 percent would have created more jobs, lifted more people out of the poverty line and improve income per household.

Here’s Crisil’s infographic on what the economy would look like if it grew by 9 percent.

[caption id=“attachment_82766” align=“alignleft” width=“600”]  Table from the Crisil report[/caption]

Neverthless, Crisil itself acknowledges that even if a stable government is formed after the elections, the economy is likely to grow by an average of just 6.5 percent for the next five years.

“There is a 50% chancegrowth will average 6.5% over this period, provided we geta decisive mandate in the ensuing general elections,” it notes.

“An improvement in investment efficiency, which hasfallen drastically over the last two years, is expected tokick in with faster project clearances, implementation ofstalled infrastructure projects and resumption of miningactivities,” the rating agency added.