'Rural resilience' helped speed Indian equity rebound despite a domestic economy 'on its knees'

Country sees speedy recovery from March sell-off

India's equity market has returned to positive year-to-date returns this month after suffering one of the harshest March falls, with strong monsoons aiding the recovery of its agricultural economy despite "lukewarm" GDP figures, according to industry commentators.

In US dollar terms, the MSCI India index fell by 40.1% to 23 March, surpassing losses for the MSCI Emerging Markets index, which bottomed out at 31.8%. However, the recovery of the world's second-most populated nation has far outpaced the wider region, returning 72.5% to 12 November, compared with 58.1% for MSCI EM, according to data from FE fundinfo. This recovery has put the Indian equity market back into positive territory for the year, up 3.2% year-to-date, helped most recently by a rise of 6.7% since 3 November, the date of the US election. India takes hit but gets ready to ri...