The structural shift in the Indian economy from agriculture to services and manufacturing, the improvement in life expectancy and education plus the growing rate of investment and digitisation suggest that the potential for annual growth should have become at least 7 per cent—the threshold beyond which a country is assumed to have achieved rapid growth. But, as T N Ninan points out here, the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist has suggested that India’s potential for growth has reached near the limit of its capacity. Given the various constraints, including Covid,  some lowering of sights on the country’s sustainable rate of growth has to be accepted. But that makes the government’s job of raising the country’s capac