IT IS Independence Day in India, a holiday during which the national flag is raised on everything from the ramparts of Delhi’s monuments to the bonnets of Mumbai’s battered black cabs. This year it may be remembered for India’s enslavement to global capital markets. Yesterday evening, August 14th, after most people had left work, the central bank imposed new capital controls to try to stem a balance-of-payments crisis. Psychologically the manoeuvre feels like a step back in time, to India’s pre-reform era of the 1980s, when Indians were fenced off from the rest of the world by their government, entrepreneurs had to beg pompous officials for foreign exchange and the rich had to ask their servants to buy malt whiskey from the black market.
