This refers to the editorial "Let's get the facts right" (August 19). The confusion on the historic value of the rupee against the dollar is indeed bothersome. While Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party have mentioned the supposed equivalence of the two currencies in 1947, they are neither the originators nor main propagators of the myth, as the editorial seems to suggest. Indeed, the finance minister's statement in the Rajya Sabha on August 14 is not a mere obiter dictum and deserves proper condemnation for perpetuating a falsehood rather than a mere rap on the knuckles. Modi's mistake was to believe him and the front page item in India's leading English daily on August 15.
The rupee was never equal to the dollar even in the hoary past. Shershah Suri formalised the silver rupee in the 1540s, fixing its weight at 178 grains (1 tola). At that time £1 (colloquially equal to four dollars or five-shilling pieces) was worth a tower pound or 5,400 grains of silver. That made the dollar worth Rs 7.58 then.
While it is now fine for the government to say the rupee needs to find its own value, its own role in carefully nursing the myth of a muscular rupee cannot escape blame. All through 2008 to 2011, when the country basked in the false dawn of India's economic superpowerdom, the government spokespersons did little to caution about the steadily falling real value of the rupee due to uncontrolled inflation. Instead, they played cheerleaders, promising inflation control by the next quarter, a deadline that kept getting extended almost indefinitely. When the rest of the world started reacting to the built-up fragility of the rupee a little over a year ago, it came as a surprise to most Indians who were fed on the government bravado pronouncements. Even when the rupee slid to 60 a couple of months ago the government continued in its damage control mode, when it should have been honest enough to accept the inevitability and desirability of the rupee reaching its real value of mid-60s against the dollar. Its seemingly futile on-going struggle to shore up the rupee even today is an indication of its mindset.
Shreekant Sambrani Vadodara
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