Instead of listing individual infrastructure investment trusts for roads, power or rail, why not offer a diversified bundle denominated in dollars—thereby reducing currency risk? The world’s 500 top asset managers are now managing over $128 trillion and mega funds look for larger ticket sizes and reduced currency risks. This way, global institutional investors need not play the guessing game about an emerging market currency and focus on funding India’s growth on neutral terms.
Dollar townships are another option. India needs homes for its burgeoning youth population—there are roughly 90 lakh marriages every year. India also needs new townships around the industrial corridors that are sustainable and smart. Urbanisation, which is a force multiplier and an employer at the intersection of rural and urban economies, could also be leveraged to woo patient foreign capital.
Global players though do not want to navigate the friction points of India’s permission raj. To start with, the Union can ask the states to compete for 25 township slots with all the clearances in place. The government could then invite bids in dollars from global players (BentallGreenOak, TPG and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone et al) with or without local partners. The idea is to enhance the value of India’s most illiquid rupee asset into dollar resources, and set new standards in urbanisation.
These are only some of the ideas, but they should suffice to frame the change in approach needed. India does not lack assets; it lacks the strategic audacity to leverage them. By professionalising ownership, recycling infrastructure and incentivising state-level competition, India can convert latent national wealth into a kinetic global advantage.
What the government does to arrest the fall of the rupee and the rise of inflation in the next few weeks would matter. But what matters more is what it does to pave the way for sustainable growth. In the final accounting of history, it is not what was done that defines a crisis. It is what was not.
Read all columns by Shankkar Aiyar
SHANKKAR AIYAR
Author of The Gated Republic, Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India’s 12 Digit Revolution, and Accidental India
(shankkar.aiyar@gmail.com)
