RBI - Ha, Ha, Ha!

RBI was never a laughing matter until Urjit Patel came along. Before that the Central Bank job used to be a very boring and staid affair with jaded, bald headed men in grey suits and grand-fatherly air appearing on business TV channels from time to time and talking about the intricacies of monetary policy and announcing interest rates. Apart from bankers, pensioners (as their fixed deposit income was at stake) and the Sensex driven class, it went totally over the heads of the plebeian masses.

Along came Raghuram Rajan, who added some pizzazz to the post with a touch of glamour. The pink press and the society ladies were swooning at his good looks (he was probably the first governor with full crop of hair) and athletic prowess. He was a keen marathon runner and TV cameramen used to keep an eagle's eye to spot him among the teeming runners during Mumbai marathon.

His financial wizardry and his gumption to stand up to the political bosses were dismissed as a mere footnote. He left the stage for good and with his integrity intact. Though it left many female fans heartbroken and their nascent interest to differentiate between repo rate and reverse repo rates, to impress their peers at kitty parties, died a premature death.

After his exit many names started doing rounds and most were the chip of the old block - the bald headed grey suited mandarins who had graced various posts in finance ministry and the now defunct planning commission.

The mantle finally fell on a totally unknown commodity - Urjit Patel. Political commentators yawned: Oh no! Not another Gujju. As all key posts were already cornered by them.

Patel came across as what the TV comic character Mr Bean would have been if he had gone easy on calories. Unlike his predecessor he is extremely wary of media and sometimes even provided Bean like moments when confronted with TV flashbulbs. During the high noon of demonetization, he almost succeeded in making himself invisible. When nosy TV journalists once made a rare sighting of Patel, their Salim Ali moment lasted a few nano seconds. They had to rest content witnessing his rare ability to sprint away!

The then Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das held forth on behalf of the government and the unenviable job of announcing changes in rules regarding deposit and withdrawal of money from banks on an everyday basis.

Those were the early days of demonetization and the much vaunted premise of panic stricken black money hoarders flowing their unaccounted stash in the Ganges or setting them on fire did appeal to many and sceptics were bullied to silence.

However, after the initial shock and awe the deeply ingrained jugaad mindset of the Indian populace took over. New money laundering techniques were improvised and demonetized cash started flowing into the banks. RBI, which used to reveal the exact inflow of money on a daily basis, suddenly clammed up.

Now more than eight months after the exercise, RBI continues to be coy about how much money actually got deposited in the banks. “They are still counting,” is what our Finance Minister would like us to believe. And Patel too like 'his master's voice' continues to parrot the same line in one Parliamentary committee after other.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Lungi Dance On Mint Street

Chennai Express reaches Mint Street

If the above statement is seen in isolation one may be forgiven for thinking that Shah Rukh Khan has become the new Governor of Reserve Bank of India. But this is how a popular newspaper, of the pink press kind, gushed in its headline to announce the arrival of Raghuram Rajan.

His entry into Mint Street had a filmi flavour. Expressions like 'blockbuster opening on first day first show', 'century on debut', 'Rockstar Rajan' were some of the superlatives bandied about by the press and twitterati. Graphic and morph artists had a field day showing him either as James Bond or knight in shining armour.

They would like us to believe that we have a new baazigar (with killer looks) on the block, who after an illustrious stint at Karan Johar's home country (United States) has returned to swades to rescue us from the chakravyuh of falling rupee and flight of FIIs from bourses. This is also compounded by the fact that there was no love lost between them and Rajan's predecessor. Everyone was going ga ga about his athletic skills and good looks. The fact that he also happens to be a financial expert and academician got totally eclipsed.

And look at the way they swooned over his dialogue baazi. His first speech had the 'yes we can' air and the Sensex/forex driven amoral class lapped it up like Rajani fans. As an aside one was reminded of Justice Katju's illustrious statement (90% of Indians are fools) and wondered whether he was being economical on that count! Anyway one can safely say that Rajan's honeymoon is well begun.

However, the din and euphoria unwittingly overlooked some harsh measures announced by Rajan, which may not find favour among the crony capitalists (who dominate our entrepreneurial space) sitting pretty on bad loans, most of them taken from PSU banks. He has warned that "Promoters do not have a divine right to stay in charge regardless of how badly they mismanage an enterprise, nor do they have the right to use the banking system to recapitalize their failed ventures."

I just hope he really means it and it is not some speechwriter's flourish to sex up his inaugural address. Once that happens then surely this honeymoon will end with a louder bang than it began.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Lament of The Yellow Metal

Times are bad for me. I am being seen as a temptress who goads all and sundry to part with their hard earned savings. The Finance Minister has declared an open war on me. He has asked the people to avoid or cut down on buying me. The RBI economists look down on me, through their thick nerdy spectacles, as a big drain on what they call 'record current account deficit' - a fancy term that simply means the country is importing way too much than what it exports.

Though it has happened due to a combination of factors, I am being seen as the sole villain. Nobody is asking why the fuel bill is so bloated and why the diesel component within it is swelling like the midriff of some of our netas. Or for that matter why the exports have fallen, what are our brick and mortar and software companies doing. Why our software companies despite enjoying so many tax holidays and other sops have not created a single world-class product like Facebook or Twitter. Why our bright youngsters who join software companies, after topping in their engineering exams, do nothing worthwhile other than make power point presentations, attend mind numbing conference calls and while away the rest of time near coffee machines discussing IPL and Karan Johar movies.

They often call me a dead investment. Really, what happened in 1991. It was me who saved the nation's honour. And I do that on a daily basis for Indian families, whether it is for daughter's marriage or son's foreign education. Chalo chhoddo, I don't want to go on like the wronged women of saas bahu serials.

I wish I had remained holed up in the humble pit in South Africa cocooned in dirt and dross. But then do we have a choice? The rapacious march of 'civilization' and technology will never let us be.

Once we get processed and enter the market, most of us end up in India. Its appetite for yellow metal defies all logic and cuts across all strata of society. I find it quite ironic that this country, with shocking poverty and malnutrition statistics, has acquired such a distinction.

After coming here I came to know that in this country the fascination for yellow metal even transcends all eras. During the Medieval period the tales about India's riches spread far a wide. For marauding raider kings such as Genghis Khan and Nadir Shah India was an El Dorado to be ransacked, whatever it takes.

For ordinary people I was seen as an instrument to be acquired as a hedge against rainy days and had to be zealously guarded against robbers and dacoits. There were no bank vaults then, hence when it came to safekeeping me, the ingenuity of Indian households was mind boggling.

During the licence permit raj days, when even toothpaste was considered a luxury, I became the darling of the underworld, as nobody could trade me legitimately, thanks to the prevailing laws. Everything happened in hush-hush manner and I used to be shipped in dhows mainly from Gulf countries and land in some shady godforsaken place; sometimes encounter hot chase from the police. People returning from Gulf countries used to smuggle me in by using the most hideously ingenious techniques. I often used to end up having a glimpse of the insides of their digestive and (hold your breath) excretory systems, while travelling to India. 

The liberalisation of the 1990s came as a whiff of fresh air and I could arrive in the country through legitimate channels and was traded in a far more straight forward way. But alas the so called liberalisation actually turned out to be crony capitalism and the nation seems to be paying the price for it now with floundering economy and falling rupee. On a personal note going by the Government's new found hostility towards me, I dread the day when the only route available for me to enter this country will be through smuggling.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

Cheques and (Im)balances

Growing up in pre-liberalisation days a career in one of those PSU banks was considered a consolation prize for those who were not brainy enough to make it to engineering or medical colleges – the two high roads to yuppie-dom. However, with the coming of foreign banks it became on par with the other two. Anyone pursuing anything else was considered a huge burden to the society, worthy of being shot if Pol Pot were ruling our country.

During my student years I too had made some unsuccessful attempts to clear bank tests, though in hindsight I feel relieved that it did not happen - as I often break into cold sweat while dealing with bank related matters such as writing cheques, forms and counting currency notes.
 
Writing a cheque reduces me to a bundle of nerves with checks and re-re … checks. A good old quote (don’t know who said it) comes to my mind – “A banker can write a dozen bad poems and nobody says anything about it, but one poet writes a single bad cheque and he's in trouble.”
 
Often the initial process of tearing the perforated portion of cheque leaf from the book itself goes wrong. The left end of the cheque resembles the spikes and troughs in an ECG reading (a bit of exaggeration, but something on those lines). A couple of times I had to discard the cheque leaf as the spikes were embarrassingly deep.
 
The next hurdle of course is filling in the particulars. With the RBI recently announcing zero-tolerance towards overwriting and counter signing, writing every cheque makes me feel as if I am riding a bicycle with its carrier laden with crates of eggs on a road dotted with potholes.
 
While writing date, amount etc it takes a huge effort to make myself sure that it is indeed correct. Sometimes the mind goes blank and even commonplace spellings seem elusive – how the heck do we spell 12?
 
In my case the main reasons for return of cheques include wrong date (a couple of times ended up writing the succeeding year, instead of the current one!) and then the amount in figures and words were not tallying.  Thankfully the banks never had any issues with my signature, though I have personally felt that they were at times a bit off-track. For many of my friends the signature is the biggest bugbear.
 
After gingerly going through all the check-list regarding the cheque, I still have a few butterflies in my stomach while inserting them in drop boxes. Even after that I keep pondering whether I missed out on something.
 
Counting cash
Sigh! This is something I could never make myself comfortable with, let alone master, and found myself at sixes and sevens.

In the pre-cash counting machine days I used to marvel at the way the nimble fingers of cashiers used to count cash. While performing the task they may even exchange pleasantries with their colleague in the next counter or interact with the peon, but no question of getting distracted.
 
Within seconds they used to perform their task and hand over the money to me to ‘re-check’. My goofy fingers perform the same task at more than double the time and with an error margin of 1-5 currency note denominations. And no points for guessing my conclusion – the cashiers are always right. In fact, it used to give me a big thrill when during one of those rare moments my tally used to match with that of the cashier.
 
Now of course their position has been taken over by cash counting machines, but the verdict remains the same.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

Nuggets Among Junk Mails

The much maligned junk mail (or spam) folder is always worth a peek. Once in a while among the maze of these worthless stuff some surprise may be lying in wait to be discovered. Sometimes mails of known persons, writing to me for the first time, show up there. So checking junk is kind of a necessary evil, though as rarely fruitful as booking a Kingfisher airlines ticket and getting airborne.

During the early days of junk mail I used to receive you-have-won-a-lottery type mails and senders ranged from well known names like British Petroleum, Yahoo and Microsoft to some seedy types (don't remember them). The prize money was always in 500,000 to million plus range in US dollar and UK pounds. They expect us to fill a form seeking personal details. To me it all seemed as incredible as Montek Singh Ahluwalia's Rs 26 below poverty line limit. But was surprised to know from newspapers that people are gullible enough to fall for it. News stories of online lottery fraud used to crop up from time to time and most accused happened to be Nigerians.

Later on there was a flood of mail ranging from matrimonial sites to sale of viagra. But what used to interest me most was the hidden treasure mails - the ones which says they have some huge fortune tucked away in some tax haven and they need your address etc. Quite often the sender claims to be from Burkina Faso, mostly a woman, and says her father's treasure is there in some tax haven and her life is in danger and is seeking someone to 'safekeep' the fortune.

But, I must say these fraudsters seem to be quite abreast of the events. When the Satyam scandal broke out they came up with mails claiming to be someone close to the CEO Ramalinga Raju and had some fortune that needed safe keeping. Later on when the Sri Lanka-born US hedge fund wizard Raj Rajarathnam scandal broke out I got a mail from his 'wife' seeking to preserve her hidden fortune.

However the one I got recently takes the cake - any day 100 times more interesting than Sachin Tendulkar's hundredth 100. The sender claimed he was RBI Governor D Subbarao (full transcript copy-pasted below) and had a proposal which could change the lives of both of us. Mind you this is the first time I am getting something like this from a serving person and that too in first person  - so far I got letters from the kin of businessmen and dictators after they were either out of power or disgraced by scandals. 

The mail talks of some Ben Morris a Canada-based contractor, who died six years ago. A sum of Rs 5.8 crore was supposed to be paid to him and risks confiscation by Indian government if nobody comes forward to claim it. The RBI governor says neither he nor his relatives can claim money and hence he wants me to send my personal details so that he can supplant me as the real owner!! Later we could share it fifty-fifty. The whole thing seemed as bizarre as saying Coca-Cola can cure baldness. But I am sure the sender's inbox may be flooded with mails from interested suckers.

Sender’s email: drsubbarao@hotmail.co.in

Transcript of the mail

RESERVE BANK OF INDIA

CENTRAL OFFICE MUMBAI

400001

ATTENTION:

FROM THE DESK OF

DR D SUBBARAO

GOVERNOR RESERVE BANK OF INDIA

CENTRAL OFFICE MUMBAI

I wish to contact you for an urgent business which i know you will keep the secret for the best of us.I am DR D SUBBARAO THE GOVERNOR OF RESERVE BANK OF INDIA MUMBAI CENTRAL OFFICE.While am writing to you is to inform you of a good business that can change your life and mine also, There is (5.8 CRORE) which is supposed to be paid to one MR BEN MORRIS as a contractor but i find out that he died on his way to his country CANADA about 6years ago and the money is about to be confiscated by Indian present governments since the owner has not come up to cash the money.So please i want you to stand as the owner of the money so that the money will be transfer to your own bank account for both of us to share it because since i am the governor in charge here i cannot use my name or my relatives account to transfer the money, All you need is to feed me back with the details below so that i will change your name as the real owner of the money.

Please note that you will stand as the full owner of the money during the transfer of the money because i will not be among the transfer TEAM, So you are the one to speak with the HEAD OF THE TRANSFER TEAM may be on phone during the time of the transfer. Any money you spend during the transfer will be remove from the money while we share the REST 50-50

NB; PLEASE DO KEEP THIS DEAL BY YOURSELF ALONE TILL THE BUSINESS IS OVER

BELOW ARE DETAILS NEEDED FROM YOU

1) YOUR FULL NAME:

2) ADDRESS, CITY, STATE .

3) PHONE, FAX AND MOBILE

4) COMPANY NAME (IF ANY) POSITION AND ADDRESS

5) BANK NAME

6) BANK ADDRESS

7) ACCOUNT NUMBER

8) SWIFT CODE/ ROUTING NUMBER

9) PROFESSION, AGE AND MARITAL STATUS

10) COPY OF YOUR INT'L PASSPORT/DRIVERS LICENSE

As soon as these information is received i will send them to our bank LAWYER to do the change of ownership with your full name and address as the rightful owner of the money.

YOURS FAITHFULLY

DR D SUBBARAO

GOVERNOR RESERVE BANK OF INDIA

MUMBAI CENTRAL