Indians bought about USD 400 billion of gold over the past 20 years. It’s current value would probably be more than USD 1 trillion at the least. https://twitter.com/koushiks1/status/1239105828893966336

If a central bank bought gold it is an asset but if an Indian housewife bought, it is accounted as expenditure - same gold but different treatment ! If RBI bought the same gold and weakened the currency we would have probably been labelled a currency manipulator.

We may have been running a crowd sourced headless currency manipulation & gold hoarding program which puts us in pole position to be one of the strong currencies of the future . But shhhhh ...

How much dollars would Coal “Atmanirbhar” policy have saved us from 2004-2017 ? ~107 bn USD ...

And atmanirbhar in edible oil in years 2004-17 would have saved us another USD 125 bn.

We haven’t take into account USD leaked in this period because we didn’t take up electricatioon of the economy and used diesel instead.

Massive ongoing investment in metros will reduce oil consumption in coming years. (COVid won’t last forever ). With crude prices likely to remain low, import bill of crude will be manageable.

All of these suggest that whatever happens to the ₹ in the short term, ₹ can surprise in the long run. Inflation in India is also likely to be very low in the long term.

Last but not least is the outflow of $ on education . This is also a shortage phenomenon & will reduce for a variety of reasons though it may not appear so. History is on the side of the shortage varnishing.