Long-term plan is to go back to academia, says Rajan

Refusing to comment on intense speculation over his tenure extension, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Wednesday said he had very “cordial” relations with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his long-term desire was to go back to academia.

Rajan, who has been outspoken on various issues, also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ending government’s interferences in public sector banks.

Terming his relationship with the government “extremely cordial”, the Governor said, “There has never been a serious disagreement between me and Mr Arun Jaitley.” “Its extremely cordial. Whether it is P Chidambaram (former finance minister), or secretary to government or Jaitley or any body else, all conversations are respectful of each other’s position and informative,” he told television channels.

Refusing to talk about his extension, Rajan said: “I cannot confirm or deny. As the finance minister has said, wait for the announcement. My tenure is till September 4. So, between now and then the announcement will come.

“My long-term desire is to go back to academia for teaching, for research and for thinking. This would be my best destination,” he said.

On Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament Subramanian Swamy’s comment that he is “mentally not fully Indian”, Rajan said, “there are certain allegations which are fundamentally wrong and baseless” and addressing them would amount to giving them legitimacy.

“I think when you think about Indianess, when you think about love for your country, it’s very complicated thing. For every person there is a different way that you show respect for your country...my mother-in-law will say karmayogi is the way to go-do your work.”

He further said he “welcomes genuine criticism of our policy but will not address ad hominem attacks” or allegations against him as individual instead of the policies and the position he holds. Attributing only a few stray cases of bad loans to money changing and phone calls from politicians, he said, there were variety of reasons including global slowdown, cessation in governance for sometime and irrational exuberance in some cases for the mounting non-performing assets.

“There were enough candidates to blame for what went wrong,” he said.

“My sense is that that has been largely done by this government. I think the Prime Minister said at Gyan Sangam two years back, intervention in public programmes we will ask public sector banks to participate in, but no interference, no phone calls. By and large my sense is that it has diminished,” he added.