It ain’t half hot in Mumbai

Elliot Wilson explains how to navigate India’s rigid investment rules and buy into a dazzling growth story

Sweat was pouring off the commodities broker sitting next to me in the sauna of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. ‘India is shining,’ he thundered. ‘You must invest in it — everyone in England must. The economy will always go up; it will never come down. We’re on top in information technology, in financial services, in infrastructure.’ Was he just overheating — India’s infrastructure, after all, is indisputably among the worst in Asia — or offering a fair assessment of one of the world’s great emerging economies?

Certainly India’s economy has begun to dazzle: it is on course to grow 9.2 per cent in the year to 31 March, and Goldman Sachs says it could grow by 8 per cent per year until 2020 — a rise as startling as China’s. Mumbai’s Sensex stock market index rose 46.7