Rajeev Malik (‘Government from Mars, RBI from Venus, February 25) is absolutely right when he says there has been a big communications failure on the part of the government. But while Malik seems to think this is due to various wings in the government not realising how important communications is, the problem is a lot deeper. The problem lies in the government itself not being clear on what it wants to do. The commerce minister thinks the government’s job is to spend its way out of trouble, and preferably this money should be spent on the exports sector. One advisor of the prime minister seems to think that money supply is growing too fast and needs to be curbed, another advisor is of the view that interest rates need to be cut. This is the reason why, when every monetary authority in the world was talking of deflation and slashing rates to avoid this possibility, the RBI came out with a policy statement saying the exact opposite! At the time when everyone and his grandmother knew that an economic stimulus was called for, the government’s economic gurus thought a copy-book non-stimulus Budget was the best — a little over a week later, the same gurus changed their minds! There is nothing in the economy that has changed in the last one week, so what made these worthies change their mind? If the government doesn’t know its own mind, it is hardly surprising that the signals it gives to the markets should be garbled.
Sanjiv Singh, Mumbai
