Like most Bollywood Films, this story too commands a Flashback. Cut to 1990.

Iraq invades Kuwait, Oil prices rise, Indias import bill & CAD increase to unsustainable levels. To make things worse, add an unstable government to the mix & Indias political system was imploding. By 1991, it was clear that the country was broke & like most kiryana shops, the International community started dealing with aaj nakad kal udhar policy. The protectionist economy model had failed. What happened thereafter is etched in the annals of Indian economic history-a slew of measures including liberalization, privatization & making the exchange rate market driven ensured that we were on the road to redemption. The sad part is that was the only time it happened with a bang. Cut to 2001. When most western markets were recovering from the dot-com bubble burst, murmurs about the shift of power from the west to east had already started doing the rounds. Analysts, Investment Bankers & Investors were gung ho about the emerging superpowers and started flushing in their money. China & India being the biggest markets were also the biggest beneficiaries. The decade also gave us the acronym BRICS-an ode to the power shift. Even in turbulent times like the 2008 crisis, these economies stood resilient & weathered strong winds before the big storm. Today, India stares at slowest growth in the last decade & policymakers seem helpless. So much so that the day Rupee plunged to an all time low against the $, they were busy doling out freebies in the form of Food Security Bill to somehow pacify the disenchanted public. Politicians pass the buck, mass media, mostly histrionically, points fingers at the establishment without actually trying to get to the root where the real problem lies. Amidst all the squabble, the rudimentary questions about infrastructure, business environment, policies have somehow disappeared. Over the course of next few months the think tank will debate & the issue will then be put on the backburner to focus on the impending elections. I have never been a big fan of numbers. Neither am I a celebrated economist. But common sense suggests there is something wrong with our fundamental systems. The real problem is that we somehow havent been able to replicate the resolve of 1991, instead we are too busy being caught up in tokenism. This lag has led us to a situation where bottlenecks far outnumber the incentives for foreign firms to invest in our country & the repeated denials by the government-opposition nexus has led us to ,as an article puts it, an economic precipice. The Rupee falling or the economy crumbling was waiting to happen. What surprises the country is the helplessness of the man behind the stellar comeback of 1991. Before the intellectuals start to write the epitaph of Indian growth story, ask yourself. Is it providence that has led us here & the only way out from here downhill or the challenges we face are opportunities to set things straight? With the charismatic & resolute Raghuram Rajan at the helm, we can still afford to believe in

the great Indian Dream. I still do. An impending meltdown might just be around the corner. What is more crucial is that we learn from it, get our act together & not waste the experience. Like most Indians, our economy too knows how to bounce back. And as happens in the Bollywood flicks - Happy Endings are possible.