Messy finance

In his column titled “Relax, Asian countries find India attractive,” the RSS journal editor R Balashankar writes: “Press forward on capital account liberalisation and the development of the bond market... This is how our financial experts are prompting the UPA in the midst of the meltdown in Wall Street. This is strange for many reasons... Should India allow itself to be sucked into such a financial regime? The people who advocate such a system are of course its biggest beneficiaries.”

The column adds: “There is a case for strengthening the financial system in India. But it is primarily the corporate debt market and banking sector. Only recently corporate investment turned to increase reliance on external finance... What India badly needs is not more financial sector reforms but better infrastructure — better roads, transport, electricity, water and better governance.

Compiled by Suman K. Jha