Faced No Interference From Either Govt During My Tenure: Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan

Former RBI Governor Raghuram G Rajan today said that he had never received any calls nor was there any government interference during his tenure and that his service had always been "pleasant and gratifying".

During his tenure at the country's apex bank, Rajan had served both under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and BJP governments.

Responding to a query on whether he saw any difference when he served both governments, Rajan said "that part, I have not talked more about. Because that starts intruding into opinions and so on which I want to leave out at this point".

"I have to say that the freedom I got from both governments... There was no phone calls from governments saying do this or do that. Remember we gave 23 bank licenses out (during his tenure)", he said after unveiling his book "I do what I do" here.

"There was never a call saying he is my friend look after him. Nothing (like that). No interference from neither government", he said.

In conversation with N Ravi, on demonetisation, he said the full details were yet to evolve since one has to understand the costs and benefits.

"We still have to wait for the evolution of the full data to understand what exactly the costs and benefits have been. Maybe we will never know. Because we never measured some of the areas where demonetisation had an effect because it is an informal economy", Rajan said .

Stating that demonetisation, Goods and Service Tax and the stress in the banking sector were happening at the same time, he said "I do not think we can pinpoint at this point of time"

However, Rajan said "cash was held in people's wallets and in basement which came back into banking system and now earning an interest. So that was missing as free financing of the government which resulted in reduction in RBI's surplus", he said.

Rajan said electronic transfers that occurred during demonetisation was a "blip" and one place which witnessed a big change was in payments made through Universal Payment Interface (UPI).

"Significantly more transaction is being done there", he said. (PTI)

For in-depth, objective and more importantly balanced journalism, Click here to subscribe to Outlook Magazine