THE ONE THING every CEO, indeed any person employed in the business world, dreams of is a profit up-cycle. This is the corporate equivalent of the proverbial—God’s in his heaven/All’s well with the world. Profits go up, companies feel bolder, invest in new projects, employ more people, hand out bigger increments and, yes, stock prices go higher. What’s not to like? Some excesses happen, but that is inevitable. No better example of such a phase than the 2003-2008 boom, probably the biggest up-cycle we will see in this era. It may have ended badly, but the memories are still sweet.
The decade that followed, with minor rebounds in between, was India’s ‘lost decade’ from a perspective