New Delhi, Oct. 14 -- The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) emergency measures to support the rupee have boosted its value, but are unlikely to do very much beyond buying us time. On Saturday, barely three days after Governor Sanjay Malhotra declared that he thought the currency was undervalued, the central bank announced a set of new props.

True, the rupee might have been trading below its 'real effective exchange rate' (REER), but markets go by supply and demand as well as sentiment, not artificial constructs like the REER, which tracks a trade-weighted basket of currencies. And the harsh fact is that today's forces of demand and supply do not favour our currency.

On the contrary. For too long have successive governors said RBI does not t...