1991 recap: Van with gold on the way to BoE broke down at Tardeo, Mumbai

The most important point, which the RBI should explain to the country - but doesn't - is that government gold and RBI gold are very different when it comes to using it for getting foreign exchange

Three former editors of this newspaper — T N Ninan, Sanjaya Baru and Ashok Bhattacharya — and I were working at the Economic Times in June 1991.

We knew that India was in the middle of its worst economic crisis since 1947.

The official story of what happened between January and July that year has been told often.

So here I want to talk about some of the lesser and unknown aspects of how that crisis was handled.

India was fortunate that it had the most pragmatic prime minister it has ever had. He handled the crisis with rare aplomb and deep courage. Some