India as a 'business partner'

Two prominent incidents in the past six months highlight the unanticipated risks associated for a foreign investor in India

India received a record $44 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the financial year 2016-17, which was seen as an affirmation of the growing pro-business orientation of the current regime that Prime Minister Narendra Modi eloquently emphasised at Davos on Monday. It is worth wondering, however, how much higher these FDI figures would have been had the Government of India — and this includes all regimes since 1991 — had showed itself to be a robust “business partner” in every sense of the term. 

Over the years, there have been frequent examples of reneged promises, unexpected policy changes, and clumsy