In a 47-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire in which Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia spoke at length about steps he thinks the Finance Minister should announce in the budget particularly to do with what he called fixing the tax system, he began by saying what we are experiencing is definitely a K-shaped recovery. He does not accept the government’s claim that it’s V-shaped. “The government has never defined what it means by V-shape”, he said. A 15% decline in the first half and zero growth in the second half is not V-shaped, he added.
Mr. Ahluwalia said that whilst the formal sector could be experiencing a V-shaped recovery that was not true for the whole economy. The small sector and the informal sector cannot be said to be experiencing a V-shaped recovery. This is why he prefers to call it a K-shaped recovery.