evidence: In 2011 and 2013, during Congress rule, India was ignominiously grouped among the "Fragile Five" emerging economies at merely the hint of a tightening of US monetary policy. Although the US policy interest rate didn’t actually rise in either year, the rupee depreciated 15% within 6 months on both occasions. Between 2016 and 2019, with Modi ruling India, the US Fed Funds rate rose 225bp, but there was little impact on India’s external balances or the rupee. And when the US Fed Funds rate rose a further 500bp over the past 14 months (the fastest increase in 40 years), India stood out as a paragon of stability among emerging economies. [...] The last four years did encompass the Covid-19 pandemic, during which India suffered its worst annual economic contraction since Independence—real GDP declining 5.8% in FY2021. The imposition of a complete lockdown (except for agriculture) in the final week of Mar’20 was, perhaps, an excessive response, at a time when India was suffering barely 500 daily cases of Covid-19. But epidemiologists were warning that 300-500 million Indians would contract the coronavirus by July 2020, and that up to 2.5 million would die. India’s actual death toll was 0.53 million (primarily in the second wave a year later), but would probably have been much worse in 2020 without the lockdown.