Turning a profit in Indian banking used to be as easy as falling off a log, if less energetic. For most of the past five years, all you had to do was invest in government bonds and book profits when their prices went up. A nice strategy, but it begs a question: what happens when they fall? This is not an idle question. Prices have, indeed, fallen this year. Indian bankers had an equally obvious answer: lobby the central bank, the Reserve Bank, for help. That may not be enough to spare them a big dent in their profits.
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