KILLING ME SOFTLY

There are lessons India can learn from the west’s economic war on Russia

- K. SUNIL THOMAS

Raghuram Rajan recently sent out a dire message about weapons of mass destruction. “When fully unleashed, (these) WMDs… destroy firms, financial institutions, livelihoods and even lives. They inflict pain indiscriminately, striking both the culpable and the innocent,” he warned.

The former Reserve Bank governor was not talking about nukes or chemical agents or bioweapons; his warning was about the dramatic and sweeping set of economic sanctions that the western powers have slapped on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

“If used too widely, they could reverse the process of globalisation that has allowed the modern world to prosper,” he said.

It is a warning for India, too. “India was a closed economy once, but our global integration has increased over the last 30 years and is now very high. So the impact on a globally interconnected economic system is going to be severe,” said Pradeep Multani, president of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

While the government played down a similar scenario battering the Indian economy, it has not stopped future possibilities being played out where India bears the brunt of a similar economic chokehold, over its nuclear arsenal or maybe Kashmir. “The sanctions by the US and other western countries against Russia have triggered a fresh debate on international trade,” said K.R. Sekar, president of the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce and partner at Deloitte India.