Hi,
I am aware of this book though I have not read it in detail.
I have been generally reading his thoughts through various mediums.
Even if we all look around, we can realize that situation is not at all rosy or for that matter good/very good. Who ever I am talking to from various sectors, things have become difficult for most of us during past 5-6 years.
The way I look at these things is as below (I am not an expert in Finance or Economics, so my thoughts are from layman investor perspective):
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Job situation : Net jobs created in last 4-5 years is in negative or at most hardly in thousands. People in IT, Online Retail, Telecom have lost jobs at faster rate compared to Auto, Engineering and other core sectors. The stress is already visible to a large extent.
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Travel Costs : I have not seen that when petrol prices were down to Rs. 60-65 or below for some time as compared to Rs. 80+ prior to 2014, translating into any meaningful reduction in auto/taxi/cab fares so that economy could have benefited by the savings which would have translated into investments.
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Pharma sector - It was growing at +20% and above till 2015, and things have completely turned into de-growth. This is not a good sign though things may change slowly after US FDA clearances are obtained by large pharma exporters but this time it may take longer time.
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Non Performing Assets : We can see that they are going up day by day and some prudent measures are still missing to revert the situation and bring things back on track.
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Rising costs of education : Ideally cost of education should have stabilized after implementation of RTE since it was supposed to ensure education for all at reasonable / affordable costs. There is no visible signs of education costs going down or stabilizing as in some of the developed nations.
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Earnings growth : It is not picking up due to various reasons except few pockets (NBFC, HFC, Banking, Specialty Chemicals, and few other consumption sectors). What does this indicate? Some deeper analysis is required over here.
Overall, things are looking tough with no. of unemployed people going up every year. This is already affecting people on ground.
Please do not consider this as negative views about economy. Economy is not dependent on only above factors but it is a consolidated picture of lot more moving parts. I am optimistic about Indian growth story and equity as an investor, but government with assistance from private sector and strong political will need to move at rapid pace to keep this positive outlook intact.