“We will see a kneejerk selloff,” Lakshmi Iyer, head of fixed income at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Co, told Bloomberg. “And if the declines come with a bad poll outcome for the BJP, we may see a big drop.”
The unexpected turn caused rupee non-deliverable forwards to experience their steepest decline in four years – the rupee is among the worst performers in Asia this year due to the weakening economy and problems in the financial sector. Without Patel, traders saw another layer of risk to monetary policy as the economy faces both foreign and domestic hurdles.
“Short-term political gain but with potentially incalculable long-term damage to the commitment to credible economic policy,” Vivek Dehejia, an associate professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, described on Twitter the consequence of Patel’s exit. It “is a very tragic day for India and for sound economics.”
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