Viral Acharya ends his RBI stint with a sense of unfinished business

Acharya's boss at the central bank, Shaktikanta Das, says a continuous and prolonged dependence on the government's capital infusion into banks can breed inefficiency

Viral Acharya will be ending his stint as deputy governor at the Reserve Bank of India with a sense of unfinished business, particularly involving the central bank’s autonomy and the health of lenders.

References to these are littered across half of Acharya’s 14 speeches as a central banker, where he uses the word “capital” more than 150 times to drive home his point: against the government’s attempts to dip into the RBI’s capital reserves, and to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hasten recapitalization of India’s struggling state-run lenders.

So far, his calls have gone largely unheeded. A central bank-appointed panel is