It is a shame that the Prime Minister of this country is an economist and the Finance Minister a Harvard Grad. Both of them should be told that:

 

 

Very true Basant. PM/FM are not working as PHds or MBAs. They are leaders for country. What quality would you like in leaders? Somebody who does wrong things knowingly or stand up against force and do right things? If PM blasts commies and others and do right things, do you think left will withdraw? If they do that, PM would become hero.

 

I may sound strange, but IMO our PM gets more respect for his mastery of handling economy than he deserves. I am first one to admit that he is very honest person. He IS gentleman. But people always talk about PM as father of reforms and nobody talks about his blunders.

 

The reforms that he did was good job but it was out of compulsion and any govt had to do that. It was not rocket science. Even Pakistan had to import economist at the job.

 

Now let me talk about blunders.

I am not talking abt bank scam coz FM can may not be able to smell scams as there are individuals involved.

 

But when there was '91 bubble, Manmohanji actually believed the euphira. He never talked about bubble or did anything about that. And remember commodity stocks were trading at p/e of 60/70.

 

First we encouraged companies to put steel/sponge iron plants and then reduced import duties quickly before plants went into production creating huge bad loans and puting banking system trouble. The sequence of steps should have been upside down.

 

Then there was bubble again in '94 and Manmohanji didn't learn from previous experience. There were 30 IPO every single day and all kind of SATTAS were taking place with non-functional companies. Fly by night operators took flight at night - with people's money.

 

When they sold stocks of govt companies, they sold in bundles!! Have you ever heard of that, that if you want to buy pantaloon, you have to buy tisco and IPCL too? They said it was disinvestment, but most of those shares were given to UTI/Govt banks. So transferring assets from one pocket to another.

 

UTI fiasco. Less said batter.

 

After 5 years of Manmohanji as PM what was the state of economy? Int rates were at 18-20% and were were at one of the worst recession.

 

 

 

The problem lies with we Indians.We blame the government for making these Oil Marketing companies bleed, but then are we behaving responsibly. Are we trying to reduce the oil we consume.... how many have decided yo forego cars for bocycles ot publictransporta. Unfortunately, India is not China, where the people will unite in no time and shun oil if they see their country in problem. I am not patronising the politicians and have been a vehement critic of them but I dont like we indians react to crisis. weare so symbolic in our responses.... we are vocal but then we dont really know how to fight as a collective unit.

 

coming to Oil Bonds, I beleive the governement was left with no other alternative.May be trying to fool everybody for some time.