Taking a leaf out of rugby rule books, a bunch of techies working out of Bangalore are seeking to put the 'sprint' back into the IT services business by 'scrumming' workable code in the shortest possible time to meet client needs.

With the economic turmoil, customers have often been unable to commit investments, and decided to withdraw IT projects midway. Moreover, many are now demanding that IT vendors do more with less, that too in a shorter timeframe.

That is exactly what agile software development does.

India recoded 5.3 per cent growth rate, the lowest over the last five years, during October-December period of current financial year, reflecting grimmer situation ahead under the impact of global slowdown and recession across the world. The economy was growing at 8.9 per cent in the same quarter of 2007-08.

Government and the Reserve Bank have taken many fiscal measures to stimulate demand across various sectors of economy and announced special economic booster package to mitigate the impact of global slowdown on the economy. However, the results of these stimulus packages will take time to reflect results.

When Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the king's horses and all the king's men had tried to put back Humpty Dumpty together again.

The same seems to be happening with the Indian economy right now. The prime minister's men are now demanding an interest rate cut from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to get the economy which is slowing down, up and running again.

Recovery in steel and cement segments and plenty of funds available with states for expenditure today gave the centre the assurance that the country will grow by around 7% during the existing fiscal.

During the first nine months of the recent fiscal, the economic system came up by 6.9%, and the government's advance estimations nailed the growth at 7.1% for this fiscal (2008-09).

India's economy clocked its slowest quarterly growth in over five years at 5.3 per cent, throwing into doubt the government's growth estimates for the full fiscal year. The economy had, in the same period a year ago, registered a whopping 8.9 per cent growth but experts now feel it may find it difficult to achieve the 7 per cent growth the government had in mind for the full year.

The government, however, put up a brave front by saying the third quarterly growth is not much off the mark. "There is still a quarter to go," Minister of State for Finance PK Bansal said.

New Delhi - A sharp slowdown in the Indian economy was evident Friday when official data showed growth at 5.3 per cent in the October-to-December quarter, the slowest quarterly growth in almost six years.

The figure was a substantial decrease from the 8.9-per-cent expansion recorded in the same period the previous year as the global economic crisis cut demand and exports.