A perfect partnership

Being an economist might be desirable but parachuting one in certainly isn't

The incumbent governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Shaktikanta Das, has completed three years in office and has been asked to continue for two more years. The Union finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has been in office for two and a half years. Two of the years they have worked together have been spent fighting Covid.

The first thing that strikes an observer is how conflict-free the relationship has been. Two of the previous three governors had sought to assert their own “independence” as being a matter of institutional importance. Or at least that’s the impression they gave. Mr Das