A: It’s true that it is a prickly issue but the biggest prickly pear is off the government’s bag, which is the Left parties. They have got another complex prickly pear on their back now, which is the Samajwadi Party. The Samajwadi Party is open to negotiations whereas the Left was far more ideological.

The Left members of Parliament and the Left Party members in general are financially extremely honest. They are not corrupt people and are ideologically misled. But the coalition partners that the the UPA has at the moment are all relatively amenable to negotiations. So, with smart dealings, it would be possible to implement a lot of things that have not been possible. Don’t underestimate Manmohan Singh now in his current mood, this man is currently on a high. His whole body language says it.    

Q: What to your mind might get cleared with least discord? 

A: I doubt whether airlines will get easily privatised because there is so much at stake for bureaucrats and politicians who like to use those facilities. There are other areas for instance in coal, government will think seriously about privatising some of their holdings in coalmines. Banking is another sector where a greater degree of divestment is expected. 

Q: Just one word on the other concerns that are more head on for the market i.e. inflation and now the threats of a drought like situation in many parts in the country. Do you expect to see perhaps some measures that will be seen as retrograde from a corporate point of view, price bands for example for many commodities, higher freebies for essential commodities do you think something like that might take place as well?

A: Despite drought in certain parts of the country overall the government is expecting a fairly good harvest and good food situation in a few months time. That’s good for inflation, the political side of the inflation in a sense that it becomes easier to manage the political fallout of inflationary pressure when food prices and the prices of essential commodities are under control.

Inflation this time around is not really amenable that much to monetary policy management. It’s the external factors principally the price of oil which has been declining a bit, there is demand drop in the United States and in some of the other advanced economies. Whether that will continue or not we do not know but let us hope that oil prices fall to USD 110 per barrel, that would be a tremendous boom for a country like India and is a sure way of controlling inflation to a much more effective extent than by monetary policy management. So, the government will not tighten monetary policy very much further at this point of time. They might play around a bit with the exchange rate but that’s within the margins.