As safe as the banks?

India cannot aspire to be a double-digit growth economy with a dysfunctional financial system

Eleven Octobers ago, the global economy suffered its most calamitous financial crisis since the Great Crash of 1929 which triggered the Great Depression. The epicentre of the two crises was the United States, which has, in both intellectual and practical terms, been the home of free markets for most of the last 100 years. 

Therefore, it is easy to arrive at a definitive conclusion about the excesses of markets, particularly in the financial sector, and to bat for an alternative, highly regulated vision not just for the financial sector but for economies at large. It is distant memory now, but in