Govt vs RBI | The 18 wise men tasked with supervision of the Mint Street

Agencies
November 11, 2018

Mumbai, Nov 11: As an unprecedented fight plays out between the RBI and the government, it is the central bank's 18 board members who are being keenly watched for their next course of action -- they are not only central bankers and government officials but also business leaders, economists and activists.

The RBI board is scheduled to meet next on November 19 amid an ongoing tussle with the government on multiple fronts.

Going by the public utterances of the RBI and government officials so far, the contentious issues are how to manage the huge surplus the RBI has accumulated, how should it deal with errant lenders and borrowers amid a persisting bad loan crisis and what could be the 'public interest' for the government to dictate directions so that it is not seen as an attack on the central bank's autonomy.

As per the RBI website, its central board currently has 18 members, though the provision is that it can go up to 21.

The members include Governor Urjit Patel and his four deputies as 'full-time official directors', while the rest 13 have been nominated by the government, including two Finance Ministry officials -- Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg and Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar.

There are also Swadeshi ideologue Swaminathan Gurumurthy and cooperative banker Satish Marathe, nominated by the government as "part-time non-official directors".

The entire board is appointed by the government under the RBI Act, which mandates the central board with "general superintendence and direction of the Reserve Bank's affairs".

The government can nominate 10 'non-official' directors from various fields and two government officials. The four non-official directors are one each from the four regional boards of the RBI.

Besides Patel, the four official directors are N S Vishwanathan and Viral Acharya, both of whom have gone public with their direct or indirect criticism of any attempt to undermine the RBI's autonomy, as also B P Kanungo and M K Jain.

Patel became Governor in September 2016 after serving as Deputy Governor since January 2013. Previously, he had served at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and was also on deputation from the IMF to the RBI during 1996-1997.

He was a Consultant to the Ministry of Finance from 1998 to 2001 and has a PhD in economics from Yale University, an M Phil from University of Oxford and a BSc from the University of London.

Acharya is a New York University Professor of Economics, while Kanungo and Vishwanathan are career central bankers. Jain was appointed as a Deputy Governor in June 2018 and previously headed IDBI Bank and Indian Bank, among other professional banking roles.

The business leaders on the RBI board include Tata group chief Natarajan Chandrasekaran, former Mahindra group veteran Bharat Narotam Doshi, Teamlease Services co-founder Manish Sabharwal and Sun Pharma chief Dilip Shanghvi.

The other members are Sudhir Mankad (retired IAS officer whose last assignment was as Gujarat government's Chief Secretary), Ashok Gulati (agricultural economist), Prasanna Mohanty (ex-IAS officer and economist), Sachin Chaturvedi of Delhi-based think-tank Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS) and Revathy Iyer (a former Deputy Comptroller and Auditor General).

In the past also, the RBI's board has had several business leaders such as Ratan Tata, Kumar Mangalam Birla, NR Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, G M Rao, Y C Deveshwar and K P Singh.

Recently, the tenure of board member Nachiket Mor, who had previously been an executive director at ICICI Bank, was cut short -- nearly a year after he was re-nominated by the government in August 2017 for a second term of four years.

The central board members in the past also included Kiran S Karnik, Y H Malegam, Ela Bhatt, V Rajeev Gowda, Suresh Tendulkar and Suresh Neotia.

The RBI was established on April 1, 1935 and the appointment and tenure of the board members are governed by Section 8 of the RBI Act.

It is Section 7, which has been in news lately, that provides that the "Central Government may from time to time give such directions to the Bank as it may, after consultation with the Governor of the Bank, consider necessary in the public interest".

"Subject to any such directions, the general superintendence and direction of the affairs and business of the Bank shall be entrusted to a Central Board of Directors which may exercise all powers and do all acts and things which may be exercised or done by the Bank," Section 7 further says.

It also provides that "save as otherwise provided in regulations made by the Central Board, the Governor and in his absence the Deputy Governor nominated by him in his behalf, shall also have powers of general superintendence and direction of the affairs and the business of the Bank, and may exercise all powers and do all acts and things which may be exercised or done by the Bank".

Though originally privately owned, since nationalisation in 1949, the Reserve Bank is fully owned by the Government of India.

The RBI is mandated "to regulate the issue of bank notes and keeping of reserves with a view to securing monetary stability in India and generally to operate the currency and credit system of the country to its advantage".

It is also required "to have a modern monetary policy framework to meet the challenge of an increasingly complex economy, to maintain price stability while keeping in mind the objective of growth.

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News Network
June 1,2020

Jun 1: Gold prices rose on Monday as riots in major U.S. cities rattled investors already reeling from strained Sino-U.S. relations and boosted demand for the safe-haven metal, with a weaker dollar lending further support.

Spot gold gained 0.8% to $1,739.75 per ounce by 0242 GMT. U.S. gold futures ticked up 0.1% to $1,752.60.

"Concerns about the unrest in the United States at the moment appear to be weighing on market sentiment," said Michael McCarthy, chief strategist at CMC Markets, adding that rising tensions between the world's top two economies provided further support to gold.

Protesters have flooded the streets in the United States over the death of George Floyd in police custody, in a wave of outrage sweeping a politically and racially divided nation.

The closely packed crowds and demonstrators not wearing masks have sparked fears of a resurgence of COVID-19, which has killed more than 101,000 Americans.

In Asia, China's state media and the government of Hong Kong lashed out on Sunday at U.S. President Donald Trump's pledge to end Hong Kong's special status if Beijing imposes new national security laws on the city.

Gold is often used as a safe store of value during times of political and financial uncertainty.

Indicative of sentiment, holdings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, rose 0.3% to 1,123.14 tonnes on Friday, a fresh seven-year high.

Further supporting gold's appeal, the dollar index fell 0.4% against its rivals.

Elsewhere, silver jumped 2% to $18.20 per ounce, its highest since Feb. 26, before retreating slightly to trade 1.8% higher at $18.16.

Speculators cut their bullish positions in COMEX gold and increased them in silver contracts in the week to May 26, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Friday.

Palladium rose 0.7% to $1,958.25 per ounce, while platinum declined 0.3% to $835.56.

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News Network
June 15,2020

New Delhi, Jun 15: A total of 1,15,519 samples of COVID-19 have been tested in the last 24 hours taking the total samples tested to 57,74,133 in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

"Total sample tested 57,74,133 and samples tested in the last 24 hours is 1,15,519," said ICMR.

With an increase of 11,502 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India reached 3,32,424 on Monday, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

The COVID-19 count includes 1,53,106 active cases while 1,69,798 patients have been cured and discharged or migrated so far, and the toll due to COVID-19 has now reached 9,520.

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Agencies
July 29,2020

New Delhi, Jul 29: The new National Education Policy (NEP) approved by the Union Cabinet on Wednesday is set to usher in a slew of changes with the vision of creating an education system that contributes directly to transforming the country, providing high-quality education to all, and making India a global knowledge superpower.

The draft of the NEP by a panel headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief Kasturirangan and submitted to the Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal when he took charge last year. The new NEP replaces the one formulated in 1986.

Some of the key highlights of the New Education Policy are:-

The policy aims to enable an individual to study one or more specialized areas of interest at a deep level, and also develop character, scientific temper, creativity, spirit of service, and 21st century capabilities across a range of disciplines including sciences, social sciences, arts, humanities, among others.

It identified the major problems facing the higher education system in the country and suggested changes such as moving towards multidisciplinary universities and colleges, with more institutions across India that offer medium of instruction in local/Indian languages, a more multidisciplinary undergraduate education, among others. 

The governance of such institutions by independent boards having academic and administrative autonomy has also been suggested.

Under the suggestions for institutional restructuring and consolidation, it has suggested that by 2040, all higher education institutions (HEIs) shall aim to become multidisciplinary institutions, each of which will aim to have 3,000 or more students, and by 2030 each or near every district in the country there will be at least one HEI.

The aim will be to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio in HEIs including vocational education from 26.3 per cent (2018) to 50 per cent by 2035.

Single-stream HEIs will be phased out over time, and all will move towards becoming vibrant multidisciplinary institutions or parts of vibrant multidisciplinary HEI clusters.

It also pushes for more holistic and multidisciplinary education to be provided to the students.

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