position? After all, the present so-called comfortable reserves position has been built on borrowed funds and even that may not be possible to sustain for very long if the trade deficit in the first four months of the current financial year is anything to go by. Whether or not the announced arrangements for the entry of foreign institutional investors into the Indian stock market introduce convertibility by the back-door is the least important of the issues these arrangements raise. The danger they pose is to the very base on which the current partial convertibility rests, FOREIGN BANKS In the Limelight THE proceedings before the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the banking-cum-securities scam have drawn pointed attention to the working of foreign banks. The chairman of the JPC, in one of his regular press briefings, has expressed the opinion that the role of the foreign banks needed closer examination because "they are a sort of leaders