I am not a superman: Raghuram Rajan

Says emerging market economies less understood; India doing a 'fair amount of reform'

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan, who has increasingly been portrayed as a “rock star” after occupying the current position, both in the national and international media, said he was “not a superman” acknowledging “little bit” of euphoria surrounding him.

“Expectations are high. Clearly I am not a superman. There is a little bit of euphoria in India,” Rajan told in Washington on Saturday at an event organised by the Institute of International Finance. “I have a wife and two kids,” said the RBI Governor in the city to attend the annual plenary meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

“We can do more than what a central bank in an industrial country can do. But we can, in some ways, do less. On where we can do more, clearly there are a lot of low hanging fruit in the financial sector,” he said, adding, the reforms in the financial sector can be incredibly positive for growth going forward.

He added the emerging market economies were less understood.

Rajan said the Union government was doing a “fair amount of reforms”, which needs little bit of time for the results to show up. “I think, with the financial sector reforms, coupled with the real sector reforms, the growth turn around should be on its way,” he said.

Speaking on India’s upcoming general elections, he said, some of the constraints on the fiscal side make it hard to see the usual problems in an elections. Populist spending going in all short of direction makes it hard to do that given the kind of fiscal situation and given the commitments made by the government in terms of fiscal deficit, Rajan said.

“So I am not extremely worried about that aspect of the elections,” he said. “The problem of being in academics and then getting into these positions is there is a well document trail of thinking, when you are allowed to thinking,” he said.