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
February 4,2020

New Delhi, Feb 4: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday accused Arvind Kejriwal of having a "partnership" with Pakistan and appealed to the people in Delhi to not vote for the AAP chief as it will make Pakistan happy.

Ramping up his attack on the Shaheen Bagh protest, Adityanath said that the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is merely an excuse for people to vent their anger against the scrapping of Article 370.

"You must have seen their partnership on 370. Arvind Kejriwal used to speak in the same voice as Imran Khan on Article 370. You must have heard it.

"Now when elections are taking place in Delhi, who is speaking in favour of Arvind Kejriwal? It is the ministers of Pakistan. They are aware that Kejriwal is feeding 'biryani to protesters at Shaheen Bagh'," he said, referring to Pakistan minister Fawad Chaudhry's tweet asking Indians to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Adityanath addressed three rallies on Monday in the national capital ahead of assembly elections.

"Will Pakistan decide who Indians should vote for. If voting for Kejriwal will make Pakistan happy, should it be done," he asked at a rally in Mehrauli.

Adityanath said his Delhi counterpart Kejriwal has become a "toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements".

Addressing a rally in Vikaspuri in west Delhi, he said that Kejriwal is not bothered about key issues such as providing clean drinking water but is concerned about Shaheen Bagh, the anti-citizenship amendment act protest site.

At another rally in Uttam Nagar in west Delhi, Adityanath said Kejriwal has played with the emotions of the people of Delhi for the last five years.

"He obstructed the development of Delhi. And knowingly and unknowingly, he became a toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements," Adityanath said.

The protest at Shaheen Bagh, he said, has disrupted traffic across the capital.

"A guest with an appointment to meet him at 9.30 am could only reach at 11. He told me he had left as early as 7 am but got stuck because of the traffic in Shaheen Bagh," he said.

The Uttar Pradesh chief minister also slammed Kejriwal for "sympathising" with elements who he said gave anti-India slogans in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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News Network
June 3,2020

Jammu, Jun 3: A mob on Tuesday disrupted the last rites of a coronavirus victim in Jammu and Kashmir and forced his family members to flee with the half-burnt body, prompting intervention by the administration which later ensured the cremation at another place as per protocol.

A 72-year-old man, hailing from Doda district, became the fourth victim of the novel coronavirus to die in Jammu region. He breathed his last at the Government Medical College (GMC) hospital on Monday.

"We had set out for the funeral along with a revenue official and a medical team, and had lit the pyre at a cremation ground in Domana area when a large group of local residents appeared at the scene and disrupted the last rites," son of the deceased said.

Only close relatives of the deceased, including his wife and two sons, were present during the cremation. They had to flee with the half-burnt body in an ambulance to save their skin from the mob which pelted stones and attacked them with sticks.

"We had sought permission from the government to take the body to our home district for the last rites, but we were told that all necessary arrangements were in place, and that we would not face any trouble during the cremation," the victim's son said.

He also alleged that the security officials present at the scene were of no help.

Two policemen who were present there failed to act against the unruly crowd, while the accompanying revenue official went missing, he said.

"The ambulance driver and other staff from the hospital helped us a lot and managed to take us back to the GMC hospital with the body the government should have come out with a better plan to conduct the last rites of coronavirus victims, taking into consideration the past experience and problems encountered during the funeral of such victims," the victim's son said.

Later, the body was taken to a cremation ground at Bhagwati Nagar area of the city, where it was consigned to flames in the afternoon in presence of senior civil officials, including additional deputy commissioner and sub-divisional magistrate under tight security.

"My uncle was admitted in the hospital last week and died on Monday afternoon. He was suffering from various ailments, especially lungs and heart diseases. Before shifting him to GMC hospital Jammu, he underwent a coronavirus test in Doda which came negative," nephew of the deceased said.

However, he said, the victim's second test after his admission in the GMC hospital came positive on Sunday.

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Agencies
January 21,2020

New Delhi, Jan 21: With the IMF lowering India's economic growth estimate for the current fiscal to 4.8 per cent, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Tuesday claimed an attack on the world body and its chief economist Gita Gopinath by government ministers was imminent.

He also alleged that the growth figure of 4.8 per cent given by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is after some "window dressing" and he won't be surprised if it goes even lower.

"Reality check from IMF. Growth in 2019-20 will be BELOW 5 per cent at 4.8 per cent," Chidambaram said in a series of tweets.

"Even the 4.8 per cent is after some window dressing. I will not be surprised if it goes even lower," the former finance minister said.

IMF Chief Economist Gopinath was one of the first to denounce demonetisation, he noted.

"I suppose we must prepare ourselves for an attack by government ministers on the IMF and Dr Gita Gopinath," Chidambaram said.

The IMF lowered India's economic growth estimate for the current fiscal to 4.8 per cent and listed the country's much lower-than-expected GDP numbers as the single biggest drag on its global growth forecast for two years.

In October, the IMF had pegged India economic growth at 6.1 per cent for 2019.

Listing decline in rural demand growth and an overall credit sluggishness for lowering of India forecasts, Gopinath, however, had said the growth momentum should improve next year due to factors like positive impact of corporate tax rate reduction.

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