Not Nachiket Mor: Why RBI COO is likely to be an internal candidate

The RBI’s restructuring involving clustering its 21 departments into fivegroups was an idea suggested by the central bank’s middle management comprising Chief General Managers (CGMs) and Regional Managers (RMs).

The Governor and the Deputy Governorsare only handholding a process that RBI’s staff wanted.

The press has interpreted the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revamp and the likely appointment of a Chief Operating Officer (COO) in form of Nachiket Mor as a battle between the government and RBI. However, according to a number of CGMs and one RM this suggestion came from the internal ranks of the RBI.

The RBI has offsite meetings in which groups of RMs and CGMs get together and are asked to suggest important issue that bothers them. It is in one of these offsites that this idea of re-clustering the departments according to their functional nature, functional likes and dissimilarities originated. The governor picked up that idea when it was presented to him and then asked that it be fashioned into a report.

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In small parts Deloitte helped but largely it was an internal report into which the CGMs and RMs gave their ideas. Now, the fifth deputy governor (DG) was suggested by the internal report as a COO because he or she was expected to look after the internal affairs of RBI. Now if it becomes a DG then it requires the amendment of the RBI Act but the report itself sees that COO position as an internal candidate because it has nothing external about it. An outsider can’t bring much to it.

It has to be someone who has risen from the ranks who can reorganise or refashion the running of RBI’s internal affairs.