With reference to "Au revoir, Mr Rajan" (September 5), it goes without saying that Raghuram Rajan's three-year tenure as the 23rd governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would go down in independent India's financial history as a "remarkable and memorable" one. He was the brain behind the successful handling of the deceleration of economic growth, double-digit retail inflation and massive volatility in the financial market. The list of his outstanding performances also includes "stabilisation" of the falling rupee, transforming India's banking sector on a "real-time" basis and shoring up our forex reserves, now pegged at $367 billion. Such a situation may be sufficient to meet the maturity repayment demand of the foreign currency deposits from November. The editorial, too, is all praise for him by ranking his politically "diluted" tenure as "path-breaking". It goes on to appreciate him for effectively addressing various long-term and structural deficiencies in India's monetary management.
However, his plain-speaking and occasional transgressing into various "out of syllabus" zones earned the ire of the government. It is a different matter that he never hesitated to put up a brave face by saying: "I am Raghuram Rajan and I do what I do." He earlier gave enough indications that he was keen to have a second term to fully accomplish the pending task linked to the much needed banking reforms he had initiated. Sadly, he could not come to any "agreement" with Financial Minister Arun Jaitley owing to their hardened positions in the context of "inflation vs growth". In any case, Rajan deserves kudos for what he did for the Indian "economy" though not the same for raking up "issues" which were not under his purview. We wish him all the best.
Vinayak G Bengaluru
Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:
The Editor, Business Standard
Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110 002
Fax: (011) 23720201
E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
All letters must have a postal address and telephone number
