Ruin and Damnation - The Fate of The Indian Rupee Today

The whole nation has been watching with dismay while the Central Government has stood by and encouraged the Rape of the Indian Rupee.

Yesterday, a high ranking official declared that 60 rupees was the right level for our currency against the USD.

All the anti-Modi pseudo intellectuals gravely declare that the demise of the rupee is a side-effect of the "state of the global economy".

I just did a little research on the net and a few back of envelope calculations to do a dipstick study to learn whether all this noxious bullshit they have been feeding themselves and the Nation is true.

I used the Bloomberg site to compare the performance of 4 currencies. I checked the performance OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS of the Indian Rupee, the Singapore Dollar, the Malaysian Ringgit and the Thai Baht. The question that I wanted answered was simple: Was the Indian Ruppe in freefall because of (only because of) the state of the global economy? 

The corollary to the question is also evident: Or is it because of wanton (I repeat: WANTON) mismanagement to benefit a few dozens at the cost of an entire nation of more than a billion citizens (without fear of ever being held accountable)?

If indeed, it was an effect of the state of the world economy then the other currencies should also be more or less equally impacted, right? Singapore, more than any other of the three nations is umbilically connected to the world economy. It is a tiny, minor manufacturing and major trading nation that depends on imports and exports for its very survival. Thailand has been struggling with strife in the recent past. While Indonesia is perhaps the best benchmark to assess India (see below a quote from a 2011 Forbes article):

But isn’t the relevant benchmark (for India) really more Indonesia than China? Especially now that Indonesia itself has stirred again, these second and third most populous nations of Asia share more in common than either does with authoritarian China.

Here is what Bloomberg (or any other currency management site for that matter) reveals about the comparitive performance of these 4 currencies:

Graph from Bloomburg site + quicky calculations

And this is what a simple calculation tells us:

The Singapore Dollar gained about SIXTEEN percent, while the Ringgit and the Baht gained about SEVEN to EIGHT percent during the last 5 years. During the same period, the Indian Rupee LOST more than TWENTY percent!