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...

Stick to what is safe, even if the returns are not very high

Over the past nine months, the Sensex dived precipitously from a high of over 21,000 to nearly a third of its value when it sank to 7,700 (intra-day) on 27th October. Millions of retail investors have suffered heavy losses on equity as well as ‘safer investments’ such as mutual funds, unit linked insurance plans (ULIPs), fixed...