The first signs that India was victim to the global credit crunch came not in the teeming financial centre of Mumbai but in the cities of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Depositors queued up at branches and ATMs of ICICI Bank, the country’s second largest bank, and simply withdrew their cash. It was the beginning of an old-fashioned bank run.

Rescuing ICICI fell to D. Subbarao, the new governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The RBI issued a short statement saying depositors’ money was safe and offering liquidity support if necessary. The private sector bank’s management was more voluble. It indignantly complained the bank was prey to “baseless and malicious” rumours, exploiting an earlier admission of exposure to $81m (£46m, €59m) in Lehman Brothers’ senior debt, and stock market manipulation.