LinkedIn clash: RBI economist accuses SBI of plagiarism in report

An RBI economist accused SBI of plagiarism, saying its Ecowrap report copied RBI's monetary policy research; SBI rejected the claim, calling it 'sensational'

Social media arguments are common, but a public clash between India’s top financial institutions is unusual. An official from the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy department has accused economists at the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, of plagiarism.

 

Sarthak Gulati, an RBI economist with the rank of assistant general manager, posted a detailed note on LinkedIn. He wrote, "As professionals in the financial and economic research community, we rely on originality, attribution, and integrity in our analysis. That's why it's deeply concerning to see what appears to be verbatim replication of RBI's Monetary Policy Reports (MPRs) in recent SBI Ecowrap reports - without any attribution."

 

 

Gulati claimed that SBI’s widely circulated Ecowrap reports copied large portions of RBI’s April monetary policy report, “paragraph-by-paragraph, including key charts and narratives”. He further alleged that the October Ecowrap issue "mirrors language and structure" from the October RBI monetary policy report, even sharing screenshots of pages from both reports as evidence.   

 

SBI rejects claims

 

Ecowrap is produced by a research team led by SBI’s chief economic advisor, Soumya Kanti Ghosh, who also serves on the 16th Finance Commission and the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

 

SBI responded sharply, calling the allegations "sad and laced with sensationalism". A day later, Tapas Parida, a member of Ghosh’s team, posted on LinkedIn, "...our equation and methodology are clearly distinct from the one deployed at the central bank's end and hence stand out as a beacon of ingenuity of original research."

 

Parida said, “While the Central Bank’s research on spatial convergence is undoubtedly more exhaustive, our work focused on more recent data to understand the inflation trend." He maintained that SBI duly acknowledged the RBI in its tables and reaffirmed the bank’s commitment to research integrity.

 

Quoting Persian poet Rumi, Parida further said, “Raise your words, not voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder," stressing that SBI Research “stands for teamwork and fair debate, not self-promotion".