Pressure on RBI to cut rates as growth nearly stalls

New Delhi: India's industrial output growth flatlined in April, piling pressure on the RBI to cut rates and highlighting economic fragility after a warning that the BRIC nation's credit could be downgraded to junk because of political inaction.

Standard & Poor's rating agency warned on Monday that India was straying from the path of economic liberalisation and could become the first of the BRIC nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - to lose its investment grade credit rating.

High inflation and interest rates, a lack of government initiative and the euro zone debt crisis have weighed on Asia's third-biggest economy for more than a year. Economic growth hit its weakest pace in nine years in the quarter ending in March.