Letter to BS: Can govt achieve its over-ambitious disinvestment targets?

One single misstep in the Budget forced foreign portfolio investors to take billions of dollars out of India resulting in massive erosion of shareholder wealth

This refers to “LIC equity portfolio takes Rs 57,000 Cr hit’ (September 17) by Jash Kripalani. Prior to the recommendations of the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Committee report in the 1980s, the government of India was in the habit of frequently inserting its hand into the Reserve Bank of India’s ‘cookie jar’, resulting in automatic monetisation of fiscal deficit leading to double digit inflation for decades.

The governments in the 21st century in India discovered a new way to finance their fiscal deficits, that is, using the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) to invest, switch, buy, rescue and act as