India too has been impacted by the crisis – and by much more than it was suspected earlier. The four major questions that have been raised are: * Why has India been hit by the crisis? * How has India been hit by the crisis? * How have we responded to the challenge? * What is the outlook for India?

Why Has India Been Hit By the Crisis?

There is, at least in some quarters, dismay that India has been hit by the crisis. This dismay stems from two arguments. The first argument goes as follows. The Indian banking system has had no direct exposure to the sub-prime mortgage assets or to the failed institutions. It has very limited off-balance sheet activities or securitized assets. In fact, our banks continue to remain safe and healthy. So, the enigma is how can India be caught up in a crisis when it has nothing much to do with any of the maladies that are at the core of the crisis. The second reason for dismay is that India's recent growth has been driven predominantly by domestic consumption and domestic investment. External demand, as measured by merchandize exports, accounts for less than 15 per cent of our GDP. The question then is, even if there is a global downturn, why should India be affected when its dependence on external demand is so limited?

The answer to both the above frequently-asked questions lies in globalization. First, India's integration into the world economy over the last decade has been remarkably rapid. Integration into the world implies more than just exports. Going by the common measure of globalization, India's two-way trade (merchandize exports plus imports), as a proportion of GDP, grew from 21.2 per cent in 1997-98, the year of the Asian crisis, to 34.7 per cent in 2007-08. Second, India's financial integration with the world has been as deep as India's trade globalization, if not deeper. If we take an expanded measure