This is the second high profile resignation in the past six months at the Reserve Bank of India.
A lack of adequate disclosures raises the financing costs of corporate firms, especially sub-investment grade ones, and keeps the capital markets small, believes RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya.
Hopefully, the grey world of central banking in a nation hit by demonetisation, will lighten up with some of his notes soon.
Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Viral Acharya is the eighth economist to quit since the Modi government took office.
Acharya was one of the youngest deputy governors in the central bank's history and was in charge of the critical monetary policy department which also made him a part of the rate-setting panel.
The finance ministry has received about 100 applications for the post, which have been sent to the high-level panel that will select a suitable candidate for the post, sources said.
Acharya emphasised that the time is "really ripe" for land, labour and agricultural reforms in India.
Governments that do not respect central banks' independence will sooner or later incur the wrath of the financial markets, ignite economic fires, and come to rue the day they undermined an important regulatory institution; their wiser counterparts who invest in central bank independence will enjoy lower costs of borrowing, the love of international investors, and longer life spans, said Acharya, who will return to the New York University's Stern Business School in August.
'Tilting at the Government in English in front of India may make him feel like Joan of Arc, but without a feel for Bharat he will merely be Don Quixote,' says S Muraleedharan, former managing director, BNP Paribas.
Be it bad loans resolution or his uncanny focus on inflation fighting which earned him criticism of being a policy hawk, Acharya was at the centre of it all and deftly steered the policy machinery.
The 42-year-old Acharya's appointment for a three-year tenure was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.
Ghaziabad police arrested a restaurant owner and cook after a video showing the cook spitting on dough while preparing chapatis went viral on social media.
"We firmly hold that undermining the central bank is a recipe for disaster and government must desist," All India Reserve Bank Association said in a letter. The association said Acharya's comments about the government's interventionist role vis-a-vis the RBI has created a flutter across the nation. "This is, however, not a sudden outburst, but was waiting to happen due to long simmering discontent," the association said.
Revising up inflation bands for the central bank will hurt the poor, former deputy governor of RBI Viral Acharya said on Wednesday, terming the current 4 per cent midpoint on price-rise as a "reasonable target".
Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar Maharashtra unit president Shashikant Shinde on Saturday said his party chief Sharad Pawar and other leaders had no prior knowledge about the decision that Nationalist Congress Party's Sunetra Pawar would take oath as the state deputy chief minister.
Maharashtra minister Manikrao Kokate was stripped of his portfolios after being convicted in a 1995 cheating and forgery case. His ministries have been reassigned to Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. Kokate has been admitted to Lilavati Hospital after complaining of chest pain.
A controversy has erupted in Chhattisgarh after a video surfaced showing spiritual preacher Dhirendra Shastri arriving in a government aircraft and a police officer touching his feet. The Congress party has alleged misuse of public funds, while the BJP defends the officer's actions as personal faith.
A court in Ahmedabad in Gujarat has directed the Congress and four of its leaders to remove a deep fake video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani from social media platforms.
NDA partners engage in intense lobbying to finalize cabinet berths ahead of the swearing-in ceremony of the new Bihar government led by Nitish Kumar. The new cabinet is expected to include fresh faces from BJP and JD(U), along with representation from smaller alliance partners.
The report said that "we believe, institutions are more important than individuals" and ultimately what is important is the credibility and the independence of any institution and nothing else.
The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) was forced to suspend the operation after flooding was reported at the underground Acharya Atre Chowk station.
The IMD issued a "Nowcast" warning, forecasting thunderstorms accompanied by lightning and intense spells of rain with gusty winds reaching 50-60 kmph at isolated places in Mumbai in the next three to four hours.
Although this may not be music to Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya's ears, the real reason in my estimation for their quitting is expatriate over-sensitivity, intolerance or arrogance, argues B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
While Governor Das was sanguine on government walking the fiscal prudence path--which was missed three out of the five budgets of the Modi government--Acharya pointed to the fiscal slippages as a worry.
'It was really difficult for Laluji to expel his son from the party and sever family ties with him.'
The price hikes during Covid were more because of supply chain and logistics disruptions caused by the pandemic and the Ukraine war rather than firms increasing prices because of higher pricing power, a report by State Bank of India (SBI) said. "It is thus incorrect to infer that concentration power dictated pricing capacity of firms, thus resulting in unyielding core inflation," the report authored by Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic adviser, SBI, said. A recent research article by former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) deputy governor Viral Acharya had observed that persistence of core inflation in India is due to purchasing power of top-five corporate houses.
The Reserve Bank (RBI) resisted a 'raid' planned by some in the government to extract Rs 2-3 lakh crore from its balance sheet in 2018 to meet populist spending in run-up to general elections, Viral Acharya, who was deputy governor at RBI at that time, has written.
The Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Tripura's capital Agartala on Tuesday announced the suspension of all visa and consular services with immediate effect until further notice because of 'security reasons', a day after the mission's premises was breached by a group of people protesting against the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das in Dhaka.
Governments that did not respect the central bank's independence would sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets, ignite economic fire, and come to rue the day they undermined the regulatory institution, Deputy Governor Viral Acharya warned.
If the eyes can be seen, an investigation should be done on who revealed the eyes and how the pictures of the idol are going viral'
'We get to know secrets such as some of India's top-rated firms do not always make payments when due and many State-owned, listed, enterprises that borrow in bond markets default regularly.' 'Without naming the bank, he says that ever-greening of poor loans by a part of India's shadow banking lay at the doorstep of India's banking, notably 'one private bank'.' Viral Acharya's Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India won't be music to many ears, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
'It is likely the government may opt for an IAS officer.' 'For the government, an IAS officer will be more easy to deal with,' notes A K Bhattacharya.
Tension between the government, specially the finance ministry, and RBI is as old as the central bank itself.
Today, with growth having slowed and macro-economic challenges in every direction, would the government have benefited from the advice of 'Harvard' economists? asks T N Ninan.
The wedding festivities have started at the Deol residence.
Even the Central Statistical Office has started using GDP as the main measure of economic activities since January 15 this year
The CIC's directive came while deciding on a plea by Lucknow-based activist Nutan Thakur, who had based her RTI application on some media reports that RBI deputy governor Viral Acharya in a lecture in 2017 had said accounts of some loan defaulters have been sent to banks for resolution.
'Trust your new governor,' Omkar Goswami advises RBI Deputy Governor Viral Acharya. 'Just because he is from the IAS and doesn't carry a PhD from a US university does not make him unsuitable for the task.' 'If anything, Das will pour oil on troubled waters, and save the RBI's reputation.'
If appointed interim head, Vishwanathan would head the central board meeting scheduled this Friday
Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Garg is the finance ministry's primary liaison with the RBI.
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