{"id":272326,"date":"2016-07-07T18:07:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T12:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehelka.com\/?p=272326"},"modified":"2016-07-07T18:07:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T12:37:07","slug":"banking-reforms-rajans-exit-likely-to-wreck-these","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/banking-reforms-rajans-exit-likely-to-wreck-these\/","title":{"rendered":"Banking reforms: Rajan\u2019s exit likely to wreck these"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"raghuram-rajan1\"<\/a>
\n\u201cIn the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous,\u201d said Robert Green Ingersoll, the great agnostic in the golden age of free thought, conforming to the Japanese proverb \u201cthe nail that sticks out shall be hammered down\u201d. If you are too good and stand out in a crowd, you will find people taking shots at you.<\/span>
\nThis exactly has been the case with the Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, who has jolted the nation by giving us a negative surprise, with his sudden decision to walk away after his term that ends on September 4 this year. Perhaps it was his vigorous drive to clean up banks that brought him into a dogfight with vested interests among political leadership and crony business community. The former International Monetary Fund chief economist had backed efforts to create a monetary policy committee and strongly advocated fiscal discipline to boost India\u2019s credibility with bond investors. Rajan had taken charge of the central bank when the rupee was at a dismal low and the inflation rate was fast. After tight monetary policy and a crash in global oil prices helped damp price pressures, he began cutting borrowing costs last year and brought the benchmark rate to a five-year low of 6.5 percent. The RBI Governor is now making strenuous efforts to cleanse the stressed assets in the banking system.
\nParadoxically, it is not an unexpected move as it came in the aftermath of a key ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticizing him for keeping interest rates too high. When reports of Rajan\u2019s desire to leave the post emerged, the rupee and bonds fell. As expected, at a recent conference in Singapore, investors overwhelmingly wanted\u00a0Governor Raghuram Rajan to continue.
\nHowever, despite his efforts to cleanse the system, he apparently felt that he lacked support from his bosses \u2014 the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley. To add to his woes, Subramanian Swamy, a 76-year-old former Harvard economist with a record of aggressive anti-corruption litigation, wrote an open letter to Narendra Modi accusing Raghuram Rajan of being \u201cmentally not fully Indian\u201d and urging on the prime minister to \u201cterminate\u201d him with immediate effect.
\nIronically, Rajan had joked when he took over the top RBI job in September 2013 that he wasn\u2019t expecting to win any votes or Facebook \u2018likes\u2019 in the position. But now when he has offered to quit, he was trending on Twitter with tweets like \u201cWe really have no respect for good, capable people. We deserve the mediocre lot thrust on us\u201d and \u201cMinimum governors, maximum government\u201d. Alas in the midst of all this we are going to lose a good Governor!
\nletters@tehelka.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps it was his vigorous drive to clean up banks that brought him into a dogfight with vested interests among political leadership and crony business community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":241708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[214],"tags":[2879,3032,3033,3034,316,3035],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}