TRIPURA-Growing Schism

growth that the elections intervened, provided a source of distraction and slowed down the pace of the reform process. As a result, a minor setback to growth was inevitable. Second, this setback, while pronounced when looking at industrial growth based on the index of industrial production, has not affected manufacturing which during the first seven months of 1996-97 registered a growth of 12.1 per cent compared with 12.3 per cent in the corresponding period of the previous year. It was only infrastructure which has performed disastrously, partly because the reforms needed to infuse funds into this sector have not been completed. However, argues the Survey, with the elections behind us and the reform once again 'on track', growth would resume, placing India on a 7-8 per cent GDP growth trajectory in the coming years.