So what do we do with the $785 billion we have just accumulated?

So what do we do with the $785 billion we have just accumulated? India’s forex reserves have just crossed $785 billion, their highest level ever. That number got me thinking about how dramatically India’s external position has changed since 1991. The balance-of-payments crisis left a pretty deep institutional scar. A lot of India’s reserve accumulation over the last three decades can be understood through that lens: build a large enough foreign-exchange cushion that we never again find ourselves constrained by an external funding crisis. And it has worked. Today, reserves cover roughly 11 months of imports, even annualising the first four months of FY27 — which were hardly benign, given the energy shock, geopolitical disruption, rupee weakness and foreign selling. There’s another interesting wrinkle: ex-gold, India has consistently run a current-account surplus. I was curious to see how our reserve position compares with other major economies, so I put together this chart {see below} We’ve come a very long way from 1991. Which brings me to the question I explore in the piece: India needs the shield. But when the shield is this firmly in place, should we start thinking about what else some of that financial strength can do? My proposition is that a portion of genuinely excess reserve strength could eventually be used to build a sovereign pool of long-term strategic capital — patient capital that can back industries and technologies where conventional private capital struggles to look far enough ahead. I’ve written out the full argument here: [Substack](https://bhuramudit.substack.com/p/india-has-785-billion-in-reserves?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=491ma) I'd love to know your thoughts