Sir — This refers to the report, “FM for concrete steps to ward off impact of US tapering” (October 25). Union Minister for Finance P Chidambaram feels that the Sensex and Nifty are indicators of economic health of a nation. Media is agog with Sensex touching 21,000. The rise is due to speculators who have cheap funds from outside. But GDP and the index of industrial production indices are down; inflation is close to double digits.
There is no rationale for the markets to cheer up. Measures to regulate foreign institutional investors and taxing of windfall profits initiated by President Pranab Mukherjee, have either been back-tracked or kept in permanent abeyance by Mr Chidambaram. Now, the Finance Minister directs the Reserve Bank of India and other finance sector regulators to open the flood gates to speculators to maintain the killing in the event of the quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve.