(Luis Miranda is the Chairman of the Indian School of Public Policy. This piece first appeared on Forbes India’s July 26 edition.)
July 24. 1991. Exactly 30 years ago, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh presented his path-breaking budget. I had returned to India just a little under two years before that, and was a junior member of the dealing room team at Citibank India. A few days earlier on July 1 and July 3, the rupee was devalued twice against the dollar—by 9 percent and 11 percent, respectively. For someone in the foreign exchange business at that time, these were heady days. On budget day, the finance minister ended his speech by quoting Victor Hugo—“No power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come.” Little did I realise back then just how much the events of July 1991 would change my life …
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