A pointless debate

No need to invoke the phantom of the foreign hand

Rajiv Kumar, National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog’s vice-chairman-designate, stirred up a vociferous debate on Tuesday by suggesting in a newspaper column that “the grip of Indian-American economists is fading as part of the ongoing policy transformation in the government”. He then went on to name the outgoing chairman of the NITI Aayog, Arvind Panagariya, and the former governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Raghuram Rajan, as examples of this trend. In fact, he also hinted that many more such resignations could be on their way and incumbents might be replaced by economists who better understood “India’s