Indian Rupee heading towards Modi’s headache

Indian Rupee is on its way to give newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, quite a hard time. When elected last year, Mr. Modi announced he might be lucky for India, pointing to oil price drop and improvement in Indian Rupee as well as stock market. Since his election, BJP government has pursued many reforms which are good if you are business house and it might help in the long term. However, in the short run he will be criticized over losing purchasing power parity, increased cess and taxes and will be branded as anti-common man & pro-business leader.

Indian Rupee is down -0.4% against Dollar today, trading at 66.6 per Dollar, highest level since 2013 taper tantrum, when Rupee traded as high as 69.2 in the spot market. Tensions will rise as the Rupee gets closer to 70 per Dollar mark.

RBI and Pundits might argue that weaker Rupee is protecting exports and helping the country to weather emerging market slowdown better, but it would be social and political disaster for Mr. Modi, when every headline in almost all Indian newspaper will print 70.

Mr. modi's approval rating on the domestic front is already on the drop and Rupee could just increase the pace.