The bailout package had no strings attached. It was a missed opportunity for better regulations

Having shifted his unpopular finance minister, prime minister Manmohan Singh played Santa Claus with a ‘stimulus package’ for industry that was preceded by another rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India as well as a steep fuel price cut. Stock prices rallied significantly then, partly in line with a...

Denials have been used as a political strategy

It was May 1992, a few weeks after I broke what came to be known as the Harshad Mehta scam. The scam was actually a creation of fake securities (bankers’ receipts and units of Unit Trust of India) by almost the entire banking sector. My report put the securities scam at around Rs5,000 crore (a stupendous figure 16 years ago) and was front-paged...

Emergency measures introduced during a crisis need to have an expiry date to avoid their misuse

We are in the middle of a global financial crisis and Indian regulators and policy-makers must, indeed, initiate quick regulatory and policy changes to minimise systemic shocks that could hamper economic growth. But it is important to ensure that emergency measures introduced during a crisis come...