Sense, Sensex and Setiments: the Failure of India's Financial Sentinels

Sense, Sensex and Sentiments is a compelling story of seemingly unrelated aspects that drive global as well as Indian economics today - a global regime that allows proliferation of tax havens, national economic policies that are simultaneously the cause and effect of corruption, corruption that eventually results in money laundering, money laundering which, in turn, sustains the economics of tax havens, reverse flow of money from tax havens that causes the boom and doom of markets across continents, exaggeration of boom and exacerbation of doom of the markets being aided and abetted by sections of the media and intelligentsia and, finally, the inexplicable but unpardonable apathy of the regulators in India. This work seeks to explore the symbiotic link between all these issues and the state of interplay between the factors that govern the stealthy flow of money to and from tax havens. It also examines in depth various policies of the Government of India that aid and abet such transactions and the reasons why these are rationalised by sections of the intelligentsia. It also brings about the overarching debilitating impact of such stealthy flows to and from tax havens on the national economy, national security and domestic markets. Sense, Sensex and Sentiments, in short, warns how our markets run the risk of degenerating into rigged casinos. Consequently, it seeks to pitchfork into the national debate, perhaps for the first time since liberalisation of the Indian economy, the issue of how we need to refashion our economic policies so as to make our markets functional and efficient.