S Gurumurthy criticises Rajan's policies but approves his Indianness

The Rashtriya Swaysevak Sangh (RSS) may have indeed wanted RBI governor Raghuram Rajan to be out of the central bank for his policies and overstepping his mandate to comment on political issues. The evidence for this has come in an interview with S Gurumurthy, considered an RSS ideologue, where he has ruled out any suspicion about the Indianness of Rajan but criticised his policies. “Culturally, Rajan is perhaps mentally more Indian than many of our liberals. My objections are about Rajan’s policies,” he has told The Economic Times. [caption id=“attachment_2846996” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. PTI[/caption] Further he has told the newspaper that he does not approve of BJP legislator Subramanian Swamy’s attack on chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian. Earlier, when Swamy started his tirade against Rajan seeking his immediate sacking from the central bank, there were speculations that the RSS was behind the move. The stoic silence maintained by prime minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley only added to the suspicion. However, this interview gives a sense that the decision on Rajan was a concerted one, with the BJP and the RSS coming together. Further explaining his stance he criticised the RBI’s NPA-related policies terming it a “sledgehammer approach”. He said the norms were “not appropriate to India and destroyed corporate India’s confidence, shocking them into a shell”. Though Gurumurthy says it is Rajan’s policies that he is opposing, he definitely has an issue with the RBI governor stepping beyond his brief to comment on matters other than economy and monetary policy. This comes through in his reply to the question on what are the qualities of an ideal RBI governor. “We don’t need a celebrity as governor who will not risk damage to his bio. We need someone like Dr YV Reddy who will become celebrated as governor — someone who knows or tries to know the deeper India, not limiting one’s ideas and interests to the financial world in and out of India and who keeps the head down and work,” he says. The operative words here are “who keeps the head down and work”, which is obvious reference to Rajan’s remarks on a host of political issues,. including “intolerance”. To a question on FDI policy, Gurumurthy says: “…the opening (of FDI) can be and is now both economic and strategic. The present opening of investment, which is in tune with the Make in India (both Make for India and Made in India) agenda, factors in the declining global trade since 2006. Considering trade and investment as alternatives, FDI is a better option than imports.” The only sectors he has a problem with opening up are food retail and civil aviation. He has also defended ‘home-grown babas-turned-entrepreneurs like Ramdev’ saying that “phenomenon shows the impulse and urge for things Indian”.