Saifullah Sani
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The news that Raghuram Rajan, India’s central bank governor is stepping down made the front pages of most Indian newspapers Sunday and Monday.
Mr. Rajan said on Saturday that when his three-year term ends in September, he will return to academia at the University of Chicago.
[Click here to read the full text of Mr. Rajan’s letter to his colleagues at the central bank in which he announced his decision to step down.]
Here’s what Indian media is saying about Mr. Rajan’s exit, or “Rexit,” as some are calling it.
It’s a pity that unlike three of his predecessors, who governed the central bank for five years, Mr. Rajan will leave sooner, said the Indian Express, in an editorial headlined “Exit Questions]” published Monday.
Besides his accomplishments as central bank governor– particularly his work to curb soaring inflation– the paper also noted how Mr. Rajan “brought in a refreshing approach in terms of voicing his opinion on a range of public issues.”
It called the appeal he made for tolerance in speech during a November address to students at his alma mater in New Delhi, a “thoughtful intervention.”
At the time, Mr. Rajan said tolerance means not being so insecure about one’s ideas that one cannot subject them to challenge.
“That the government is willing, at a delicate economic juncture, to let go of one of the finest minds in its economic policymaking team, raises questions for which it is yet to offer any convincing answers,” the paper said.
An editorial published in Mint, a financial daily, criticized the way in which some politicians of the ruling party assailed Mr. Rajan in recent months.
“No central bank governor has had to face the sort of personal attacks that Rajan has been subjected to.”
The paper said that even though these were led by Subramanian Swamy, a member of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the “final responsibility for not standing by Rajan should rest with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.”
“They cannot pretend otherwise.”
Mr. Swamy said last month that Mr. Rajan’s policy decisions had led to “the collapse of industry and rise of unemployment.” According to local media reports, Mr. Swamy wrote to Mr. Modi in May asking him to sack the central banker because he was “mentally not fully Indian.”
On Saturday, in a tweet from his verified account, Mr. Swamy said:
“My admiration for Namo [Narendra Modi] has gone up hugely. Media, industrialists, and international bureaucrats piled on him for R3 [Raghuram Rajan], but he did not bend”
The Mint editorial underscored Mr. Rajan’s efforts in “rebuilding credibility — through a new monetary policy framework, higher interest rates and, yes, his personal qualities.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who also stepped down from the chancellorship of a university in eastern India in February last year citing political interference, said Mr. Rajan’s decision to steer away from a second term was “sad for the country,” according to the Press Trust of India. “We are losing one of the most skillful financial economic thinkers in the world,” Mr. Sen said.
Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s chief economist, also weighed in with high praise for Mr. Rajan.
Ashok Desai, a former chief economist at India’s federal Finance Ministry, wrote in a column in the Economic Times that Mr. Rajan was “so good that he was wasted on this government.”
Mr. Desai wrote that he was looking forward to Mr. Rajan operating as one of the best economists now that he is “free of the constraints that his official position imposed on him.”
“Even as governor, he was a riveting speaker. Now he can say and write what he likes,” Mr. Desai said. His commentary published Monday was titled “Good Luck, Governor: Keep talking Raghuram!”
The Telegraph, another English daily, on Saturday reported the news of the RBI governor’s departure under the catchy headline: “Wrecks It: Rexit Comes True, Rajan Hounded Out.”
Columnist Mukul Kesavan wrote in a Monday column in the newspaper that “Rajan became a proxy for this government’s commitment to economic rationality.”
“Rational economics was a fig leaf that helped obscure a darker politics; Rajan’s departure leaves the government (and, by implication, its supporters) a little more naked than before,” Mr. Kesavan said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/...ted-to-rbi-gov-raghuram-rajans-exit/?mod=e2fb
Mr. Rajan said on Saturday that when his three-year term ends in September, he will return to academia at the University of Chicago.
[Click here to read the full text of Mr. Rajan’s letter to his colleagues at the central bank in which he announced his decision to step down.]
Here’s what Indian media is saying about Mr. Rajan’s exit, or “Rexit,” as some are calling it.
It’s a pity that unlike three of his predecessors, who governed the central bank for five years, Mr. Rajan will leave sooner, said the Indian Express, in an editorial headlined “Exit Questions]” published Monday.
Besides his accomplishments as central bank governor– particularly his work to curb soaring inflation– the paper also noted how Mr. Rajan “brought in a refreshing approach in terms of voicing his opinion on a range of public issues.”
It called the appeal he made for tolerance in speech during a November address to students at his alma mater in New Delhi, a “thoughtful intervention.”
At the time, Mr. Rajan said tolerance means not being so insecure about one’s ideas that one cannot subject them to challenge.
“That the government is willing, at a delicate economic juncture, to let go of one of the finest minds in its economic policymaking team, raises questions for which it is yet to offer any convincing answers,” the paper said.
An editorial published in Mint, a financial daily, criticized the way in which some politicians of the ruling party assailed Mr. Rajan in recent months.
“No central bank governor has had to face the sort of personal attacks that Rajan has been subjected to.”
The paper said that even though these were led by Subramanian Swamy, a member of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, the “final responsibility for not standing by Rajan should rest with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.”
“They cannot pretend otherwise.”
Mr. Swamy said last month that Mr. Rajan’s policy decisions had led to “the collapse of industry and rise of unemployment.” According to local media reports, Mr. Swamy wrote to Mr. Modi in May asking him to sack the central banker because he was “mentally not fully Indian.”
On Saturday, in a tweet from his verified account, Mr. Swamy said:
“My admiration for Namo [Narendra Modi] has gone up hugely. Media, industrialists, and international bureaucrats piled on him for R3 [Raghuram Rajan], but he did not bend”
The Mint editorial underscored Mr. Rajan’s efforts in “rebuilding credibility — through a new monetary policy framework, higher interest rates and, yes, his personal qualities.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who also stepped down from the chancellorship of a university in eastern India in February last year citing political interference, said Mr. Rajan’s decision to steer away from a second term was “sad for the country,” according to the Press Trust of India. “We are losing one of the most skillful financial economic thinkers in the world,” Mr. Sen said.
Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s chief economist, also weighed in with high praise for Mr. Rajan.
Ashok Desai, a former chief economist at India’s federal Finance Ministry, wrote in a column in the Economic Times that Mr. Rajan was “so good that he was wasted on this government.”
Mr. Desai wrote that he was looking forward to Mr. Rajan operating as one of the best economists now that he is “free of the constraints that his official position imposed on him.”
“Even as governor, he was a riveting speaker. Now he can say and write what he likes,” Mr. Desai said. His commentary published Monday was titled “Good Luck, Governor: Keep talking Raghuram!”
The Telegraph, another English daily, on Saturday reported the news of the RBI governor’s departure under the catchy headline: “Wrecks It: Rexit Comes True, Rajan Hounded Out.”
Columnist Mukul Kesavan wrote in a Monday column in the newspaper that “Rajan became a proxy for this government’s commitment to economic rationality.”
“Rational economics was a fig leaf that helped obscure a darker politics; Rajan’s departure leaves the government (and, by implication, its supporters) a little more naked than before,” Mr. Kesavan said.
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/...ted-to-rbi-gov-raghuram-rajans-exit/?mod=e2fb
