A voice of reason or talking out of turn?

It is a scene that haunts the memory, the sight of the earnest Indian executive from the IMF passing a Dublin beggar on an ice cold late November’s day in 2010, on a day of national financial surrender.

The courtly and dapper AJ Chopra soon became the public face of the fund’s rescue mission in Ireland.

Frequently by his side, was a man, also of Indian origin: Ashoka Mody, who would soon take over as IMF head of mission and it would become clear that the people from the fund were proving rather more accommodating from an Irish perspective than their fellow bailout representatives from the EU and the European Central Bank.