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Does India know the way?
As the Congress tries to launch another Amma, the BJP to reinvent Hindutva and others to present a united front, the economy is a tiny blip on their radars. By March, even if India's trade and investment prospects are no worse than now, East Asia's troubles and what they mean for this country are sure to dominate all discussion. The impact on the rupee and Indian exports are part of the challenge to Indian policy-making.
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Unscheduled stop in Croatia
It was about half an hour since we had moved out of Zagreb, and the steam locomotive was making a valiant effort to maintain its speed despite the sub-zero temperatures outside. There was a carpet of snow as far as the eye could see. I had with me two companions, Hartley, our chief engineer, and Ivan, our liaison man from the State Trading Corporation of Yugoslavia.
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Redefine reform as privatisation
Economic reforms have led to welcome progress in disinvestment of the PSUs, reduction of food and fertiliser subsidies, devaluation of the rupee, freeing of gold imports, reduction of IT rates and dismantling of the license-permit raj. However, on some other issues the reforms have begun to mean exactly opposite of what they are thought to be.
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Better safe than sorry
It is official now. The government had maintained for weeks that the fairly steep fall in the rupee's value was a natural and overdue correction for a currency that had been overvalued for some months. The RBI has now implicitly acknowledged that, in the current skittish state of capital markets, it is hard to say when a correction might turn to runaway speculation.
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