An avoidable path

Public recriminations will help neither the govt nor the RBI

Last week, Viral Acharya, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), gave a rather alarming speech in Mumbai. In the speech, widely seen to have the blessings of RBI Governor Urjit Patel, Mr Acharya argued that when governments undermined the central bank’s independence they scored an own goal of sorts because doing so triggered a crisis of confidence in capital markets, which are, in turn, tapped by governments (and others in the economy). Mr Acharya explained how the decision-making approach of a central bank was starkly different from that of a popularly elected government. Using a cricketing analogy,