RUCHIR SHARMA - On INDIA'S GDP, INFLATION & ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

Ruchir Sharma | Morgan Stanley

'Ratings downgrade possible; inflation worrying'

"""""Something similar is true of Indian policy as well that what we need to do first is stop doing any harm. So, even the first objective now seems to be that let's go back to where we were on February 28 before we had a terrible budget, lets reverse all those steps first then lets take it. In India's case its about lets stop doing any harm, lets reverse some of the damaging stuff that we have done over the past few months and not expect any big bang reforms which is going to transform everything in a second because those sort of sentiment swings are never healthy.

Can monetary policy do something about inflation or it can't?

This is where the intellectual debate goes on. I really think that the bigger fault lies with our spending habits rather than to do with the interest rates policy out here. You cannot keep spending as you said you can’t keep writing cheques which a country can’t cash. The average spending in India has been growing government spending about 15% a year ever since the UPA came to power in 2004 before that it was more like 10-11%. To me that is the fundamental problem.  """""""