PM MODI TAKES DIRECT CHARGE OF ECONOMIC MEASURES TO AVERT CRISIS

Agencies can easily determine what brokerage firms and other financial agencies are involved in the ongoing operation to ‘short’ the rupee, especially through Singapore, Dubai, London and New York.

With the popularity of the Bharatiya Janata Party in danger of getting battered by economic storms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken direct charge of measures needing to be taken to remove volatility and generate growth in the Indian economy. This has been welcomed by the overwhelming majority of Central officials, who are honest and dedicated to the public welfare. They say that intervention by the PM has taken place just in time. Despite improving economic fundamentals warranting a much stronger rupee, India’s currency has been the worst performing in Asia. Officials (some now retired) who had revealed in 2013 that a secretive cabal headed by a prominent member of the then gov- ernment was deliberately “shorting” ( i.e. bringing down the value of) the rupee, say that the same group is once again active in currency markets. Their intent is to ensure that the rupee falls to as low as Rs 100 to a US dollar by this December, an objective that they are well on the way to achieving. The well-resourced cabal is being assisted by the mechanism of “Exchange Traded Currency Futures” that was strength- ened during the UPA period and inexplicably has been allowed to continue even after 26 May 2014. Because they enjoy close ties and credibility with key channels within the business press, it has been easy for this group to spread (through the media) an expectation amongst the public that the rupee is in “free fall”. Those officials who have declined to join the gravy train of the cabal warn that “the sooner exchange- based currency futures get restricted in India, the better for the stability of the rupee”. They say that the ten years of the UPA period were marked by policies “deliberately designed to make it a cakewalk for global fund managers to make hot money out of markets in India”, and that “too many such policies are still being continued” by North Block, “mainly because the key officials responsible then are still in important positions now”. It ought not to be impossible for investigative agencies to determine exactly what brokerage firms and other financial agencies are involved in the ongoing operation to “short” the rupee, especially through Singapore, Dubai, London and New York, even though these centres are outside the reach of the Reserve Bank of India. Not that the RBI seems in any rush to do anything about the matter. Thus far, the RBI leadership has not even been making reassuring statements about the currency. At the same time, “a carefully coordinated volley of opeds and statements is being generated that are designed to pretend that the rupee is overvalued” even at the present bargain basement