Why not expose our fundamentals to the world?

"Expressing confidence in India's ability to bounce back after the Covid crisis abates, Standard and Poor's retained India's sovereign rating at BBB- with stable outlook." Earlier, Moody's had downgraded India's rating from Baa2 to Baa3, the same level as S&P's BBB-, but with a negative outlook. "India's above average real GDP growth, sound external profile, strong democratic institutions that promote policy stability that led S&P retaining the sovereign rating", but, "The risk to fiscal slippages at a time of higher government borrowing and low per capita income adding to the general government debt are some of the factors that pose a risk to long term stability." "India's foreign exchange reserves rose $8.2 billion in the week of June 5 and has now crossed the milestone $500 billion mark for the first time in country's history." India's strong fundamentals deserve higher ratings said the government and the Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian said that though the economy will contract till October there will be a V shaped recovery thereafter, as happened after the Spanish Flu in the 1920s. The Spanish Flu came just after World War I and many states in the US responded by "closing schools and churches, banning mass gatherings, mandated mask-wearing and other restrictions", wrote Noah Smith. However, things are different now as international supply chains have been disrupted and "both consumes and businesses are more highly leveraged than they were a century ago". Prof Deepak Nayyar seems unimpressed by our fundamentals, writing, "For 2019-20, annual GDP growth at 4.2% was also the lowest in 11 years since the global financial crisis in 2008-09. This is no surprise as the economy has been in a downturn for the past three years. But the economic slowdown and downturn began 10 years ago." The economy did grow at 7.9% from 2014-15 to 2016-17, but that was because of a sharp drop in oil and commodity prices. "The announced support of Rs 20 trillion is an illusory claim." Why? Because, "PSBs (public sector banks) are expected to play a key role in the execution of this strategy," wrote Hardayal Singh, former additional secretary Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). But, although the Reserve Bank (RBI) has flooded banks with liquidity, banks are reluctant to lend, choosing to park the money back with the RBI, wrote Aparna Iyer. "Over the past 20 years, they have oscillated between reckless lending borne out of irrational exuberance, and extreme caution borne out of the fear psychosis of four Cs -- courts, CVC, CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) and CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation). At the moment they are in the latter phase," wrote Singh. "Our 50 year experience with government ownership of banks leads us to only one conclusion: Banks cannot be run on political and bureaucratic directives." Amen to that.