Beginning midseventies (soon after the enactment of FERA,1973 but not necessarily because of it), the situation relating to the external sector started improving primarily because of increasing remittances from Indian diaspora and impact of green revolution. Thus, through the 1980’s, there was progressive and incremental liberalisation in cross border transactions, albeit within the same paradigm. Two observations are in order here.
As regards his work at the ECB, I would conclude that Otmar Issing was the brain behind the ECB’s monetary policy strategy in the first years of EMU. Or, in other words, during this time, he was the implicit third pillar of this strategy. Again and again, he has stressed the utmost importance of such an explicit strategy for monetary policy.