Regardless of who is right, Rajan has to quickly come to grips with a number of obvious challenges, ranging from the immediate to the medium term.
Rau's felt the need to be where the action was.
The institute that once drew largely elite students also decided to expand its base and cater to a wider pool.
The friction with the political class is not only about interest rates and monetary policy. While the government often spoke freely about its discomfiture, the RBI had to be careful even in its response to the government as any loose statement would affect the markets.
'The prime minister's comment on 'revdi culture' was welcome. But I am disappointed he did not follow up on that.' 'All political parties, including the BJP, have been guilty of this.' 'Now, Modi's guarantees, the Congress's 'nyay' path and both ruling and Opposition parties are vying with each other for freebies in my home state Andhra Pradesh.'
As the global economy sways into uncertain territories and domestic prices almost certain to rise, Raghuram Rajan's ideas would have come in handy.
Duvvuri Subbarao recounts how his tensions with P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee, then finance ministers, over monetary policy spilled over into other issues in the central bank in this excerpt from Who Moved My Interest Rate?, his memoir of his term as Reserve Bank of India governor.
Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar's 'formidable legacy will survive through a generation of civil servants whom he trained, nurtured, mentored and inspired with a rare combination of energy, enthusiasm and passion,' says former RBI govenor Dr Duvvuri Subbarao.
The speed at which he led the central bank in different areas -- ranging from internal reorganisation to inflation fighting, stabilising the currency, taking on rogue corporations, cleaning up bank balance sheets, and opening the sector -- makes one believe that Rajan knew he had only three years to do his job. A fascinating excerpt from Tamal Bandyopadhyay's MUST-READ Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking.
The 30-share Sensex ended down 90 points at 19,429 after hitting an intra-day low of 19,398 and the 50-share Nifty ended down 40 points at 5,881 after touching an intra-day low of 5,871.
T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan recalls a tussle between the government and RBI when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister and how it was resolved.
If the new governor can think out of the box even as he signals that he can bat for the RBI cadre and respect its institutional memory, that will go a long way in getting out of the current impasse.
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