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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Missing the wood for the trees -Prabhat Patnaik

Missing the wood for the trees -Prabhat Patnaik

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published Published on Nov 6, 2018   modified Modified on Nov 6, 2018
-The Indian Express

Debate around RBI-government stand-off ignores the structural cause behind India’s economic woes: Interest rates as an instrument cannot achieve multiple, contradictory goals.

The stand-off between the Narendra Modi government and the Reserve Bank of India has generated a false discourse on the one hand and an illusion on the other. In this discourse, the RBI’s position, articulated by its deputy governor, is that central bank policy has to be guided by financial markets rather than by a government headed by politicians with electoral compulsions and “populist” agendas. This is obviously an undemocratic position, for it amounts to saying that crucial decisions affecting people’s lives should be outside their sphere of intervention through the electoral process.

It is also a dangerous position since financial markets are dominated by speculators. As Keynes had pointed out, not only is market incapable of distinguishing between enterprise and speculation, but speculators, far from being “bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise”, create instead a “whirlpool” upon which enterprise itself becomes a mere bubble. The livelihood of over a trillion people cannot be made “a by-product of the activities of a casino”.

As against this RBI position we have the government’s position that is equally questionable, which wishes to make the RBI into a virtual government department. To be sure, since the RBI is meant to serve society, its activities must be socially controlled. But the government’s position makes government control synonymous with social control. This would not matter if the government itself was socially accountable through, for instance, being subject to parliamentary oversight; in that case, there would be some restraint on its using control over the central bank for furthering the interests of its crony capitalists. But, as we know, the government is refusing to divulge the contents of Raghuram Rajan’s note on major bank defaulters even to the Estimates Committee of Parliament, just as it is refusing to divulge the pricing formula on the Rafael deal even to the Supreme Court. Both refusals suggest attempts to hide bonanzas made available to crony capitalists. Government control over the RBI in such circumstances would amount to an undermining of the institution.

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The Indian Express, 6 November, 2018, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/narendra-modi-government-reserve-bank-of-india-rbi-urjit-patel-5435360/


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