Infra to banks: What will it take to fix Indian finance after the crisis

Can India in the 2020s try to reinvent its finance-construction model so that it works for everyone and not just for a few thousand financiers in Mumbai?

Thirty years ago, India endured its last big financial crisis when it had to send gold held in the central bank’s vaults over to London to borrow hard currency from the Bank of England. Luckily, the flights landed safely, and so did India.

The turnaround in economic thinking triggered by that balance-of-payments humiliation saw the state shed controls on production and imports. The emergence of a globally attuned software services industry as well as vibrant capital markets—which India opened up to the world faster than China—helped spawn entrepreneurship and create a middle class. Hundreds of millions were lifted out of poverty;