Windows of Opportunity

K. S. Krishnaswamy was a leading light in the Reserve Bank of India and the Planning Commission between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. He retired as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank.

Armed with a doctorate from the London School of Economics he began his career at a time when the road was rocky for newly independent India. The author vividly captures the optimism, commitment and desire to do well among policy makers in those days. His ringside view of the pulls and pressures within the administration and outside it, the hopes that sustained a majority in the bureaucracy and the lasting ties he formed with many he came in contact with are compelling on their own. Even more relevant is what he has to say about the political agendas eroding the Reserve Bank’s autonomy and degrading democratic institutions since the late 1960s.

Windows of Opportunity however is not a political polemic; it is a ruminative memoir by one who saw much happen, and not happen, at a time when everything seemed possible and promising in India.