Monday 17 December 2018

In Which Urjit Gives It Those Ones

Urjit Patel had the unenviable task of stepping into the shoes of Raghuram Rajan, the rock star economist who had wowed both the banker class and the laity. He had also set a tall order of standing up to the ruling establishment and fight for the interests of the Reserve Bank of India. 

And Patel began on a note that couldn't have been more lacklustre. Barely two months after he took over, the Narendra Modi government came up with its most controversial decision to take away nearly 86% of cash in circulation. He appeared to be a man who was totally clueless about what was going around him.

Ideally such an announcement should have been made by RBI governor, but the Prime Minister chose to take the centrestage and delivered his famous 'Mitron' speech.

As the collateral damage unfolded - dry ATMs, long queues in front of banks and widespread distress, Patel made himself scarce as a Great Indian bustard. The then Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das and current RBI Governor performed the unenviable task of announcing ad-hoc changes in rules regarding deposit and withdrawal of money from banks.

Patel soon earned the sobriquet 'Invisible Man' and became the favourite muse for meme makers and became a butt of ridicule on social media. He came across as a person who could not handle the glare of TV flashbulbs and his parroted response 'we are still counting', when queried about the amount of demonetized currency notes deposited in the banks, helped him move up a few more notches in the meme makers' popularity charts.

Amid all this hilarity nobody noticed when Patel turned the corner. It is difficult to pin-point when Patel's seemingly limitless malleability reached the end of its tether, but appointment of S. Gurumurthy as non-executive director certainly was one such trigger.

Ties between the government and RBI grew frostier with every bi-monthly Monetary Policy Meeting to decide on interest rates. Things reached breaking point when Patel realised the government had sets its eyes on RBI reserves and was planning to hang the Damocles sword over him in the form of hitherto unused Section 7 of RBI Act.

Even then no one thought Patel may actually quit, but this reclusive Gujarati thought it was an opportune time to leave as he did not want to add a new blot 'allowed dilution of RBI autonomy' in his CV, in addition to the existing one - 'presided over demonetisation'.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

No comments:

Post a Comment