You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. - Abraham Lincoln.
When the UPA was elected to power the stock market saluted it with a 20% circuit up with a firm belief that this Govt. will put India on a strong growth path through a spate of developmental activities led by second generation reforms. In retrospect the collective wisdom of the market as defined by stock indices was a classic case of fooling all the people some of the time. As time progressed all that the markets saw from the Govt. was mere hope and talk with very little action bringing our belief for a sustained high single digit growth to a virtual standstill. “All talk and no work has made Manmohan a dull Prime Minister”
While all this happened the stock market bulls quickly set themselves up for a long haul. They saw the ticker race towards the earlier top of 21,000 and the first rule for a market participant is that anyone in this market can lie but not the ticker. So they piled up with gusto buying the old beaten down names, stocks that hadn’t moved and waited for the ones that made new highs to collapse –a classic case of what happens in the every market cycle. After two and a half years all that remains of those stocks are memories - both bitter and forgettable.
As the markets kept postponing its expectations and pre-poning the celebration the Govt. kept disappointing through inaction with complete disregard to the irreparable damage that they have inadvertently done to this nation and its economy. These include mindlessly raising interest rates to show en effort towards curbing inflation whereas the source of the problem was elsewhere, trying to be a green man by cutting down mining and developmental work to a point where the Power companies suffer from acute shortage of coal and the lending agencies from risks of non-payments, slowdown in infrastructure activities and finally statement by the RBI of its inability to defend the rupee have taken a toll on our growth momentum as we run the risk of sub 7% growth for the next two years.
A Govt. that is made up of Lawyers at the top seems to do just one thing -argue and postpone. Meanwhile our Prime Minister seems to follow a policy of avoid, delay and defer. Instead of clamouring for FDI in retail with limited support the PM should focus onthe basics. POSCO’s US$ 10Bn project lies stuck between the files, several mining projects have been stopped because the Govt. has suddenly turned green? FDI in retail is a five year plan. How can Wal Mart improve delivery from farm to fork in the immediate future? We did not have FDI in retail when we clocked 9% growth in GDP? The proposed Food security Bill is another of those legislations being introduced with an eye on vote bank politics. It will encourage people to sit back at home and work for three days a week instead of five. This is a colossal waste of public money and is against the basic roots of capitalism. I guess 2G was better because it was a one time expense but this one will continue for years because once done no party can reverse the process once it is done.
The only hope for an investor is that India will survive inspite of the Govt. and its policies and these times could be one of the better ones to invest in but only for someone who has a long term view but don’t ask me how long is the long term? How-ever there are a lot of landmines in the market with a few more live explosives in them so it is better to walk the concrete path (strong names) rather then take the shortcuts (beaten down stocks) even though it would mean taking a little more time in reaching to our destination.
Edited by basant - 18/Dec/2011 at 4:56pm