by Paul Mampilly
The Sovereign Investor
I was 13 when India was in crisis. It had borrowed too much money in dollars and was desperate to pay it back.
India needed dollars badly. So the government came up with a scheme to get it from people like my father who were earning money in petrodollars.
The Middle East was booming, and thousands of Indian people had followed my dad’s example and gotten jobs in Dubai and places like it. They were benefiting from the fast-growing economy there.
Dubai’s currency is easily exchanged into dollars, and India was desperate to lure my father and others like him into lending those dollars to the government.