Uncertain times: Will the festival season buying sustain? - The Hindu× A ‘V’-shaped recovery seems to be on the cards, but informal and services sectors continue to remain laggards The contraction of India’s real GDP at 7.5 per cent in Q2 FY21 was much better than expected by professional forecasters as against a deep contraction of 23.9 per cent in Q1. This has brightened a V-shaped recovery of the economy going forward. Pessimists predicting U/L/K-shaped recovery have been silenced. Even the RBI’s predictions of GDP contraction in Q2 FY21 (9.8 per cent in October 2020 policy and 8.5 per cent in the current forecast) were on the higher side (Table 1).