Demonetisation: Bank officers union calls for Urjit Patel's resignation; focus on RBI's role

The All India Bank Officers Confederation has called for the resignation of Reserve Bank of India governor Urjit Patel, taking the moral responsibility for the current crisis in the country and the deaths of more than 50 people, including 11 bank officials, according to a report in The Indian Express. “The present governor has utterly failed in his role by taking a crucial economic decision without planning, which has brought havoc to the nation’s economy and lives of the majority,” D Thomas Franco, senior vice-president of the confederation, has been quoted as saying in the report. [caption id=“attachment_3116494” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Urjit Patel. Reuters[/caption] According to him, as neither prime minister Narnendra Modi nor finance minister Arun Jaitley is an economist, the RBI has economists who are capable of taking the right decisions on “matters relating to economy and people’s lives”. In 1978, when the Janata government decided to demonetise, then RBI governor IG Patel had advised against it, he has pointed out. With the confederation raising calling for the resignation of the RBI governor, the focus now seems to be shifting to the RBI’s role in the development. An article in Scroll today has pointed out that the RBI’s silence over the last 13 days, when the common people went through serious hardships and the economic activities in both rural and urban areas almost ground to a halt, raises questions about on its independence. “Urjit Patel, who took over from Raghuram Rajan as the Reserve Bank of India governor in August, has not found it necessary to make a single statement about the chaos that demonetisation has unleashed,” the article says. Firstpost columnist Yatish Rajawat has also raised the issue in an article today. “The shoddiness with which demonetisation has been executed should have been the responsibility of the RBI governor,” he has said. The article further argues that the developments over the last two weeks have shown that Patel is “grossly under-prepared for any task that requires quick decision-making”. Franco too is making this point when he says that the shoddy way in which the entire scheme has been executed shows that the central bank did not have a roadmap at all. “It was very, very poor planning on the part of RBI that has led to this crisis,” Franco has been quoted as saying in the reported.