India’s macroeconomic resilience gives it room for deliberate reform. Fiscal discipline and manageable external balances help contain vulnerability, but they cannot, by themselves, assure businesses and citizens that opportunity is accessible or that rules will be applied consistently to everyone. Confidence also requires knowing where state authority ends, and independent judgement begins.

Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran’s comparison with 1991 is useful because he distinguished an inflexion point from a repeat of the balance-of-payments crisis. The challenge is to reconsider the assumptions governing economic policy while there is still room to choose, rather than wait for circumstances to compel a retreat.

Two recent columns illuminate this challenge from different directions. Pratap Bhanu Mehta questions the credibility of reform without changes in how the state exercises power in his Indian Express column. Akash Prakash, in his Business Standard column, describes doubts about India’s place in global portfolios, while recognising that much of the market’s weakness may be cyclical. Their concerns warrant examination without treating market performance as a verdict on governance.

These concerns deserve attention because macroeconomic resilience has not settled doubts about India’s capacity to generate opportunity. The Economic Survey 2025–26 itself identifies institutional incentives as a constraint despite the presence of policy intent, ideas, and resources. That makes the government’s own methods a necessary part of any explanation of the confidence gap.

The government should frame policy, establish rules, and enforce them consistently, leaving commercial choices to those who bear their risks. Disputes require independent adjudication through prescribed institutions. Decisions about what to produce, where to invest or how to price should not depend on personal access or informal official preferences.

Government should also resist moral suasion.

When an appeal comes from an authority that controls permissions, taxation or enforcement, its voluntary character becomes uncertain. Businesses cannot easily know whether declining will carry consequences, whether competitors face the same expectations or where persuasion will end. Unwritten expectations create uncertainty alongside the formal rules.

Established businesses may navigate ambiguity through experience, resources or relationships. New entrants cannot assume those advantages. An economy can therefore produce successful companies while leaving potential entrepreneurs uncertain whether the same opportunities are available to them. Predictable boundaries widen the space in which independent enterprise can develop.

Social temperatures belong within the same argument. People commit to businesses, jobs and places when they expect equal protection regardless of identity. When social divisions narrow whom people can work with, where they can live or how safely they can trade, they also narrow the reach of economic opportunity.

Tolerance of intimidation weakens that expectation. Consistent enforcement and an unambiguous rejection of coercion are therefore part of the conditions for economic participation, alongside the security of contracts and property.

Reform must make commitments enforceable through published procedures, reasoned decisions and effective appeals. Policy can change as circumstances require, with transparent justification and reasonable transitions. The discipline lies in accepting lawful private decisions, including decisions the government dislikes, and ensuring that its economic ambitions do not become unwritten obligations for others.

Macroeconomic stability creates the opportunity to undertake this correction deliberately. Credibility will grow when businesses and citizens can rely on the rules without needing personal assurances about their application. The most consequential reform would be a state confident enough to let independent choices shape outcomes within a framework that applies equally to everyone.