His faith in India remains unshaken but steel magnate Swraj Paul has little doubt that it will suffer badly in the current global economic meltdown, a view contrary to that of many economists who feel that the country's strong domestic economy will help it deal with the crisis.

Paul's engineering group, Caparo, has invested heavily in India where it has opened 22 plants in the last four years but he bluntly says that the country would suffer more than Britain because it was quite late in realising the gravity of the situation.

The 77-year-old NRI industrialist candidly admitted in a newspaper interview in London that Caparo may have to lay off workers and that the group's profits will fall from the projected £80-90m this year.

The Times of India