Christopher Woods, chief strategist of Credit Lyonnais Societé Anonyme, has for long been a regular visitor to this country.
At least once a year he comes and notes down what I have to say about the Indian economy. Soon after his last visit in March, he gave an interview to Business Standard.
That itself is unusual; most foreign financial firms jealously guard their intellectual acquisitions. They absorb all information and views, which they then sell to clients at huge prices.
So I was surprised to find Woods scattering wisdom free to Business Standard readers.
What he said, however, surprised me more. He felt that the Indian reform process had gathered critical momentum; "This is despite the scepticism of many of the capital's ultra-negative intelligentsia, who have inherited from the British a talent for cultivated cynicism."
That recalled our recent meeting. I had conveyed to him my view of the Bharatiya Janata Party government's economic policies -- at his request on a busy day, free of cost.
Since he has come so often to see me, I assumed that this sort of interrogation was useful to him in his work.
I did not undergo it to dampen his optimism about the Indian economy; if I had known he had made up his mind, I would have spared myself the time -- and him his irritation.
But his interview made me wonder if I was too negative on India. Certainly, when I was in the finance ministry, I felt that the Indian journalists who came to interview me were misanthropes.
Some were habitually distrustful, some malevolent; most were neither.
But by and large, Indian journalists looked for dirt rather than facts, and for views rather than analysis.
Foreign correspondents varied in their level of knowledge. But most would usually come after doing some homework and ask very specific questions.
One or two were so good that they made me feel I was walking on eggs; I looked forward to their visits. There were some great Indian journalists too -- Swaminathan Aiyar was the best.
Admittedly, it was my job to put a positive spin, and a healthy scepticism towards what I said would not have been out of place.
But we in the ministry had a consistent picture of the economy, and even a critic would have found it valuable to understand our reasoning.
The best milked me of facts and analysis and then wrote what they liked; the worst sought a headline, right or wrong.
I wondered if, after nine years of journalism, I too had become negative and cynical. I have a less clear picture of the government's economic strategies today than when I was in the government, because I do not have the resources to construct one.
The basic way a journalist would get the picture is by reading statements, speeches and reports. I read the Economic Survey and get no sense of strategy.
I read the Commerce Ministry's export strategy, and found it focused on commodities and embedded in the past.
In his many speeches, Yashwant Sinha almost always said the right things, but I found no connection between what he said and did.
Jaswant Singh talks too little. I know only one major speech by him, to the Indian Banks' Association in Mumbai; he said basically, 'I want you to lend to such and such of my constituents.'
I have from time to time had friends in the government, but have not necessarily been better informed because of them.
They were eager to defend, and reluctant to explain. Some were very good friends before they got strategic posts and after they left them, but became poor communicators just while they were in those posts.
Manmohan Singh and his principal officers spoke with one voice because they were united in thought. There was so much articulation of policy on file, in the minister's speeches, in documents which he invariably read through, that one could speak with confidence for the ministry.
Today's officers, however good they might be, cannot, because the ministers are not capable of understanding and developing policies -- and do not have the confidence in the officers to leave policies to them.
How then can one function as an economic journalist?
I try to make up for lack of official inputs by reading newspapers. The great thing about India is that so much leaks out of the government; if one reads newspapers carefully, one generally gets the picture.
The difficulty is that the picture does not emerge out of day-to-day reading of newspapers, for they do not give the background and do not connect up stories. There are no economic magazines with a broad sweep.
Economic and Political Weekly comes closest, but has too few facts and too much opinion (except on Monetary Policy). So what I do is to sit down once in three months and read through the quarter's newspapers -- those that I respect.
That reading gives me an idea of where the action is and where it is tending. But it still does not give me the impression that Woods has -- that the reforms process has gathered momentum.
One can make a list of the 'reforms' being done -- sale of a PSUs, introduction of state VAT, freer foreign exchange for exporters, reduction in import duty on hair oil, et cetera, et cetera -- and derive an impression of a process.
But reforms must have a macro objective; the objective would define what is a reform and what is not, and whether it is significant or not.
I see no overall end-result that this government wants to reach; instead I see the enormous damage it has done by, for instance, borrowing ever more, raising agricultural import duties, and making government expenditure ever less productive.
I just do not see the momentum of reforms. I see the unrelenting momentum of instinct for survival and greed.
Some of Woods's cheer comes from the performance of the Indian economy; it must not be mixed up with the quality of economic policy.
The Indian economy is surprisingly resilient; it reacts positively to small stimuli.
But as Dharmakirti Joshi wrote in a recent article, every industrial boom after 1996 has been short, modest and narrowly based. We do not know about the current one yet; but there are enough historical grounds for scepticism.
My remit is to write for the Indian reader. I cannot make her happy by telling her India is doing better than Burundi or Colombia. In any case, it is not my job to cheer her up, or to make her buy pharmaceutical or software shares.
I am employed because someone thinks my judgment of economic affairs is good; my job is to give the reader an honest, serious personal view.
So I am afraid that for the moment I do not see an alternative to cultivated cynicism. But I hope to make my cynicism amusing.Powered by 
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