Letters: Why Rajan stands out

This refers to the report "Rajan's job safe if Modi wins elections: BJP" (April 29). Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan does not need an assurance from a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) functionary that his job would be safe if Narendra Modi wins the elections. Rajan is a person of international standing academically and also as a financial expert. He was appointed to the office, which he eminently deserved, for a fixed term after adopting a well-laid down procedure. Any new government trying to tamper with his appointment would have to think many times before doing so. It would also tantamount to the incoming government being accused of encroaching on the autonomy of the country's central bank (which any democratic regime swears by) at its very start.

India has maintained almost invariably the tradition of not changing the governorship of RBI with a change of regime. C D Deshmukh, an appointee of the British India government, whose appointment was cleared by none other than British Secretary of State L S Amery, was the RBI governor when we became independent. The Jawaharlal Nehru-government not only left things unchanged but gave Deshmukh an extension when his term expired a year later. This tradition was not followed only once when the Morarji Desai-government had to remove the appointee of the Emergency regime on the grounds that the person was not qualified for the job - the change was hailed by the entire country. Rajan is a person of an entirely different hue and any government would question his appointment at the cost of its own reputation.

R C Mody New Delhi

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