India may be in better economic shape to create a rupee trade zone

But the China factor could play spoiler

Before we examine the pros and cons of India’s attempts to create a rupee trading zone to wean itself off the US dollar, it would be illustrative to take a walk down memory lane.
 

In the early 1990s, a young trader fresh out of college who had started out at state-run trading house MMTC had his first brush with the Indo-Russian rupee trade. Officials from the former Soviet Union wanted MMTC to supply packaging machinery made by Austria, Vienna-based Starlinger against rupee credit accumulated by the Russians. MMTC would import the equipment to India, and re-export to Russia, for which