India’s Credibility Crisis

As on a battlefield, so in the marketplace — a war to defend the economy is not won by the deployment of superior armoury but by the cleverness and credibility of one’s strategy and tactics. In a crisis, economic policymakers are like generals in war time. Their reputation is won not by the superiority of […]

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Incredibly Shrinking India

Each explosion of “disruptive transformation,” be it the anti-corruption campaign or the post-Nirbhaya protests, has ended in a whimper. For the past 20 years, India has been growing and growing while remaining exactly the same. The glitz of ‘new’ India has proved skin-deep, and each day brings a new revelation of the same old ugly […]

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India Seen Curbing Widest BRIC Budget Gap to Boost Rate-Cut Room: Bloomberg

India’s government may curb spending growth in the budget tomorrow to pare the widest fiscal deficit in major emerging nations, seeking to boost the central bank’s scope to reduce interest rates as the economy falters. Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram will keep deficit goals set in October of 4.8 percent of gross domestic product for the year through March […]

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Is India Doing Enough to Charm The Market?

MARGARET THATCHER said that you cannot buck the market. But if the experience of India’s government over the last few months is anything to go by, you can charm the pants off it. My e-mail inbox is overflowing with missives from the finance ministry that promise a bounce in the economy, assert a step change […]

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India’s Reforms of Decade Must Work Now or Die

Sitting in the study of the prime ministerial bungalow in New Delhi, surrounded by manicured lawns and palm trees, Indian leader Manmohan Singh and his soon-to-be finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram pored over plans late into the evening to stem a growing sense of crisis. Singh, the 80-year-old soft-spoken architect of the country’s economic opening two […]

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How Sonia Gandhi Was Persuaded To Back India Reforms

It had been a brutal August for India’s Congress party: economic growth was wilting, the monsoon rains were failing and the opposition had it cornered on yet another corruption scandal. In stepped Sonia Gandhi to revive the morale of the ruling party’s lawmakers, exhorting them at a meeting to “stand up and fight, fight with a […]

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Singh’s Bold Political Gamble on Opening India’s Economy

Sometimes, raw courage is the only way to break political gridlock. With a flurry of bold executive decisions yesterday on foreign investment — the most extensive policy changes since his government was re-elected in 2009 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India has rediscovered his reformist zeal. India’s consumers, media watchers and flyers will benefit from the Cabinet’s approval of […]

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