Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Gold Policy in Modern India

Who is responsible for Mumbai Bomb blasts?

Dawood Ibrahim? Wrong!

Tiger Memon? Wrong?

The answer is Late Morarjee Desai - India’s ex-Prime Minister and Finance Minister.

And whole lot of RBI and GOI officials who were behind 40 years of legislation which has created India’s underworld, corrupted 4 generations of India Government officials and reduced the value of Indian savings by Rs.1,20,000 crores. (4000 tons of gold purchased by Indian consumers at a 30% premium at todays value - do your numbers).

The Indian development idiom has been imported - for instance, the Five Year Plans from Russia. Indian monetary authorities have been led by western discourse and strategy. No enabling mechanism, (an output of differential thinking) like the Japanese business led by MITI, American business supported by Marshall Plan, NATO, CENTO, SEATO, IMF, World Bank, US Exim Bank, ADB. It is these mechanisms that enabled these economies retain their dominant positions. India’s Gold Policy was also a case of warped thinking. To be fair, domestic thinking has had to contend a tectonic shift from a colonial-feudal system to a nationalist, democratic economy.

The other big disadvantage - English language.

India’s red herring of English language stopped it following French strategy, an empire under eclipse before WW2. Today, 60 years later, France has come ahead of its arch rival and competitor - Britain.

In the 1960s, most of the world was buying gold at an artificially low price US$35 - and the USA was bleeding gold. The French team of Charles de Gaulle and his economic advisor, Jacques Rueff did quick maths. It was clear this मेला would not last long. The USA was printing dollars and dumping it in world markets. The French redeemed their dollar holdings, sent the French navy to take delivery of gold from USA and bring it to Banque de France. The French raised gold reserves and dumped dollars. Banque De France finally increased its gold reserve to 92% (as a percentage of total foreign currency /monetary reserves).

March 15th, 1968. Finally, US support for gold prices stopped at consumer level. USA continued to promise redemptions to Governments at US$35 per ounce. And on August 15th, 1971, the world got the Nixon Chop. By that time, USA gold reserves had dropped from 20,000 tons to 8500 tons.

What did India do.

From practically, 1939, (the start of WW2) gold imports into India were controlled or banned. This British legacy (aimed at colonial exploitative ends) was continued by Indian Government and RBI. Many Gold control laws were enacted which stopped all legal gold imports into India.

Our finance minister at that time - Late Morarjee Desai.

Seymour Hersh, an American investigator implied that Morarjee Desai was in CIA pay. Morarjee Desai filed a court case - and subsequently died. Henry Kissinger, made a bald defence of Morarjee Desai.

The other thing that happened was that gold imports went underground.

Gold (illegal) imports (called smuggling) spawned biggest criminals that India has seen. Karim Lala, Haji Mastan, Varadarajan Mudalir, Yusuf Patel, Tiger Memmon, Chota Rajan, and of course, Dawood Ibrahim’s - a biological son of a police constable Sheikh Ibrahim Kaskar, was spawned by Morarjee Desai’s laws.

These laws corrupted four generations of Indians Government and politicians. It made gold in India very expensive - and the Indian buyer remained in poverty longer.

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