When the Union Budget was presented in February, a popular notion was that the Indian economy was witnessing a “rare goldilocks period”, as RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra put it. A cultural reference, goldilocks refers to an economy being exactly where policymakers would like it to be — sustained growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. Since then, the news has turned negative. First, India revised (with a new base year of 2022-23) how it calculates its gross domestic product (GDP) — the measure used to assess the size of any economy — and found that the old series (with 2011-12 as base year) was overestimating GDP.  Then came the US’s war in Iran, and the further fall in the rupee’s exchange rate with the US dollar. Last week, Japan and the UK overtook India in terms of GDP. With the hostilities in Iran still on, more observers are pencilling in a slower growth and high inflation for India, especially given India’s overwhelming reliance on energy imports via the Strait of Hormuz.…