JAMAL MECKLAI: If I were RBI Governor...

MID-TERM MONETARY POLICY 2008-09/ Bs Jury

I would immediately call in a yoga instructor and sign up for two hours a day of intense asanas. Of course, it would mean that I have to get up before 6 each morning, but I guess that’s a small price to pay for calming my hand on the rudder.

For boy, it sure has been a stormy start, hasn’t it? I was – and, of course, remain – delighted to be appointed RBI governor, and I had thought that I would have some time to enjoy my move to Mumbai and the lovely verandah at my house where I used to read the Business Standard.

But, you know, I haven’t had a single evening with enough time or energy to sit outside and enjoy the October heat with a cooling vodka and coconut water – again, something I had read about in the BS. More’s the pity.

Well, at least I can do my yoga on the verandah. Of course, I know that it won’t be easy – the yoga, I mean. Unlike my predecessor, who has a very calm, almost Buddha-like personality, my friends tell me I’m more like Ganesa, all laddoos and music and fun. In fact, I think that may have been why the FM selected me for this post – perhaps, it seemed time to turn up the volume.

But, with the markets doing such a grotesquely exaggerated version of their job, and the media also doing their job as the flighty handmaidens of disaster, I guess I need to tone it down a bit – put out both a calming influence and one that highlights the upside.

But, in all this heat and dust, it isn’t easy to point out that all things considered the India story has not materially changed, particularly since everyone is looking on me to tell them what will happen to the market.

I mean I know the rupee may fall below 50, market volatility will be huge, and some people will get hurt. But the truth is that’s what always happens – only the ones who get hurt and the ones who benefit change.

We’ll just have to keep all the taps open as far as we can, and intervene as we have been doing, letting the reserves run down as much as is needed. Depressions never last forever and markets do not move in one direction forever.

In fact, a very rapid movement is sometimes the best way to get some glitches out of the system. I know it’s tough, but so is this yoga stuff. But it helps me keep the faith, and, as I think of it, Ganesa doing yoga may well be a perfect icon for the new world that is evolving.