When a consumer goods firm says that it is finding five-rupee biscuit packs difficult to sell, you know the slowdown is not limited to white collar jobs and to people like us, but is biting down hard across the board. The signs of slowdown are everywhere—in the sudden job losses reported across the country, in the tiny increments that keep the income barely above inflation, in the stories that friends and family tell of small businesses struggling to stay alive, of poor sales off-take, of downgrading of stuff from premium to pure utility and then postponing purchases.
One way to understand this pain is to see it in the context of a larger change in the political narrative that wants to clean up the country—Swachh Bharat is not just about a physical clean-up but towards a cleaner way to do business and freedom from corruption. You can read more about this here.