Letters: Candid FM

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has used the opportunity of Lunch with BS to drive home two points ("We've paid the price for delayed decisions", August 10). First, the acts of omission (such as the failure to check the growing burden of subsidies) and commission (like a less-than-friendly tax regime that impacted the environment for foreign investment) during the earlier years - no need to guess who he is targeting here - cost the economy dearly. Second, the articulation that the autonomy of the Reserve Bank of India is limited to monetary policy, going to the extent of stressing that the government has the authority to issue written directives to the central bank on other matters if the situation so warrants. Apart from being an advance warning to the governor-designate, Raghuram Rajan, this also reflects his resentment that the outgoing governor, D Subbarao, enjoyed (or so perceived) far more leeway than the minister liked. If Chidambaram has come out relatively unscathed despite Aditi Phadnis' relentless efforts to corner him on several difficult issues, it is only superficial. He is the last man not to recognise the ills plaguing the economy and the measures needed to address them. But time is not his side, apart from other constraints.

Parthasarathy Chaganty Mumbai

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