Is political scandal threatening India's attractiveness?

Manish Sonthalia, portfolio manager of the Gemini MOSt India fund, discusses the headwinds affecting the country's investment climate and reveals the positive signs of life.

The current United Progressive Alliance government (UPA), headed by Dr Manmohan Singh, is currently seeing a mid-term crisis. Virtually every Indian government of the last 40 years has been hit by one before the halfway mark, with the only exceptions being in the last decade. The Vajpayee government emerged apparently unscathed from the Gujarat riots of 2002 and felt confident enough to go into the 2004 elections with an “India Shining” campaign. The Manmohan Singh government of 2004 was a more complete departure from trend, so that he became, after Nehru, the only prime minister to serv...