The Hindu Business Line : Sensex to senses

THE jitters gripping the stock exchanges, with the sensex graph looking like the ECG of a patient in the throes of myocardial infarction, are not evidence of a mature and confident investor community or a market operation, worthy of a potential economic giant that everyone, from the President down, wants India to be.

One hopes that the regulatory bodies concerned with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the lead are keeping a watch to ensure that the erratic and (what also seems) mindless behaviour is not the result of mischief by certain vested interests, as it recently happened at the time of offers of stocks of some public sector colossi.

I think the time has come to bring the sensex to its senses. Except for some still remaining peripheral areas, the process of deregulation can be said to be in its culminating stages, leading rapidly to a healthy situation of expanding spheres of trade, commerce and industry in private and non-Government hands. The country's economic management is thus heading for the happy prospect of being delinked from political vagaries. In other words, major players are getting to be more and more autonomous in the exercise of their discretion, judgment and decision-making powers, without worrying about the Government's dreaded tap on their shoulders.

Although the Government has not yet fully shut shop and is still in a position to meddle in business in some respects, sufficient space for comfortable and wide-ranging manoeuvre exists for both investors and economic entities, in disregard of the games that politicians play among themselves.

The business world should learn to ignore their tomfoolery for yet another reason: Because of the very frailties of politicians, it is not just business and industry that can take the bit in its teeth; the administrative class too can get across squabbling politicians ideas and proposals without too much of a hindrance.

And if business and administration can converge on an agreed agenda for the common good and establish a working relationship in the best sense of the world (without implying any hanky-panky whatsoever), the symbiosis and synergy can catapult the economy to undreamt of heights. In short, the political and economic tracks can run parallel without getting into each other's way. To a degree, this has already begun to happen.

Market players should keep a cool head without being scared by political ups and downs and stop running helter-skelter like chickens caught in the middle of a busy highway.

B. S. Raghavan

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