These are the kind of people who would normally travel to Italy, London or the United States to celebrate their vacations there, said Wilson Dass, store manager at The Collective, an upscale chain selling items like overcoats. in cashmere and expensive leather bags. . Instead, they come to his store, in the industrial center of Gurugram.
Mr Dass said he sold many more Hackett jackets and Versace bags this year, especially recently, than in previous years.
Sales are up over 30% this year from 2019, he said, and the big winter shopping season hasn’t even started.
His clients, a mix of Indian business leaders, wealthy wives and “neo-rich” want to show off their Karl Lagerfeld bags and Michael Kors tracksuits, he said.
“They have all this money,” Mr. Dass said. “They have to spend it somewhere.”
India’s economic statistics may reflect the hustle and bustle of the Indian economy better than the damage. In 2015, the country changed the way it calculates growth. The new approach, widely seen as more modern and endorsed by Mr. Modi’s predecessor, depended on numbers reported by the formal sector, such as large companies. But he assumed that the country’s large informal sector, which employs farm laborers, day laborers, rickshaw drivers and many millions more, would grow in tandem with the formal sector.
Defying this hypothesis, the pandemic has disproportionately affected India’s informal economy, which employs around 90% of the country’s workforce, although the exact numbers are elusive as they are not within the limits. books. Since the start of the pandemic, at least 10 million Indians have lost stable, well-paying salaried jobs, according to Vyas.
