Would You Invest In The Indian Stock Market?

I don't think I'd do it directly - I'd maybe do it via funds.

I'm not sure India's going to be a big long term success story. It sells services unlike China which sells products/manufacturing, Brazil selling agricultural products, Russia selling natural resources. However its wage inflation is around 14% while wages are static or deflating in the West which is the part of the world that was buying the services India sells. That means India is becoming less competitive, price-wise and as customers are generally unhappy with offshore call centres and the quality of the work performed in India is rarely up to that done locally (my company has 50-60% of its IT offshored to Wipro) so I think the Indian service economy could become a car crash within 5-10 years.

I agree with G-man. In July last year I sold some New India Investment Trust in a portfolio I manage. After 4 years it had made a 210.7% profit. Since then they have fallen nearly 20% but I am a bit hesitant about going back in.

India suffers from significant bureaucracry coupled with corruption. There are some areas in which, in spite of that, they have achieved success.

A number of UK companies have brought their call centres back to the UK.

Medical is a potential growth area. I remember hearing on the Today programme somebody explaining that a US citizen preferred to have coronary surgery there. His reasoning was that this op would be done by an Indian surgeon probably 10 times more often than by his US counterpart. This is because they have hospitals that specialise with individual surgeons specialising within that specialisation.