Blame it on democracy

Is the India story over? This, apparently, is a common question that foreign investors ask government officials representing India at international conferences. Obviously, that’s a tough question to answer since it inevitably raises questions about the government’s lack of progress on policy reform. The way one senior official said he played it was to say India is doing well but not the government, explaining away the policy paralysis on the country’s democratic set up. The official did, however, wonder how long this explanation would work.