No silver bullet: Benefits of bank mergers to be visible only in long term

Whether folding one weak bank into another will make the combined entity any stronger remains to be seen

With every passing day, India’s economic indicators are turning a little bleaker. The situation is bad enough to warrant using the word “crisis,” arriving just as the government’s fiscal ammunition is spent.

The announcement Friday of 5% GDP growth in the June quarter showed the economy growing at its weakest pace in six years. On Sunday, the top six carmakers reported a 29% drop in August sales, stoking fears that the slowdown could get still worse. The Rs 982 billion ($13.7 billion) collected in August via the goods and services tax, the main tax on consumption, was the smallest in six