India: The Rising Elephant

I opened the Business Standard last morning, and was intrigued to see that almost every single page talked about ongoing or proposed reform in the financial sector. Currency futures, pension reforms, the passing of the Companies Bil - all seem to point towards a greater depth and width of financial markets.
I'd blogged earlier about the Mistry report, and its vision for Mumbai as an international financial centre. There are strong arguments in the report for increasing the levels of FII and FDI investment in government and private markets, deregulating the debt and derivatives markets, setting up an independent debt management office, and many other steps that would facilitate benefits/positive externalities for the financial sector and growth in general. Some of these seem farther away than the others, but all of these are important and each one would help accomplish the other.