Cleverer than the rest.

"Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran...said India is not defending the rupee and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is taking necessary steps to ensure that the movement of the rupee is gradual," and "that the rupee is is being managed in a manner that reflects the fundamentals of the economy." BS. Extraordinary statement when "India's foreign exchange reserves grew $8.895 billion to reach a new record high of $642.453 billion in the week ended September 3,2021." LM. Exactly one year later, the RBI's "headline foreign exchange reserves declined by $7.9 billion to $553.11 billion in the week ended September 2." "Analysts cited the RBI's defence of the rupee through dollar sales amid a globally strengthening greenback as one of the reasons." BS. "RBI has achieved its objectives very well as Rupee has remained an outperformer till date and on volatility score as well, we have done quite well." ET. "Outperformer" means the rupee is stronger than other emerging market currencies, which means the RBI is cleverer than all other central banks. What about the fundamentals? "On September 2, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that India has surged past the United Kingdom to become the fifth largest economy in the world." HT. On the other hand, "World Bank's database shows India's per capita GDP (in current USD) stood at $2,277 in 2021, the global average was $12,263." Fortune India. Indians earning Rs 25,000 per month, or Rs 300,000 per year, fall in the top 10% of wage earners in the country. "Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman...sought to know from India Inc what is stopping them from getting into manufacturing when countries abroad are showing their belief in India." ET. One reason could be sudden changes of policy. Customs duties started going up in 2014-15. "But the real break in the policy came in 2018-19: That year, a massive 42.3% of all tariff lines went up, the average of all customs duties increased from 13.7% to 17.7%, and the proportion of tariff lines bearing 15% or higher duty rates shot up from 28.7% to 51%," wrote Prof Arvind Panagariya. The government has started a Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme which provides "financial incentives for businesses to augment their output. They could come in the form of tax rebates, lowered import and export duties or easier land acquisition norms." CNBC. How does the scheme work? First the government increased custom duties on mobile phones by 20% in April 2018, then it offered PLI of 6% on every mobile manufactured in India, down to 4% in fifth year. "This is important, for it means that even if a manufacturer imports all the parts from abroad, and simply assembles it in India, he gets 6% subsidy on the invoice price," wrote Prof Raghram Rajan & Rahul Singh Chauhan. The result is that "The Indian customer pays a higher price because of tariffs," and "The Indian taxpayer pays for subsidies." India's economy may be growing but it is jobless growth said Prof Rajan. MC. Higher prices and higher taxes keep the nation poor. Despite the blather.