The Economist pitches for Rajan's second term, says PM Modi should end suspense

The Economist, which famously said in 2014 it wouldn’t recommend Narendra Modi for India, has in an article said the Prime Minister to end the suspense over RBI governor Raghuram Rajan’s second term for the good of the economy. [caption id=“attachment_2821030” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan. Reuters[/caption] “The case for extending his tenure rests both on his performance and on the challenges that await,” the article has said. After listing out his achievements, including bringing down inflation and redoing RBI monetary policy system, the article spells out the greater trials to come. Among them is a likely spike in inflation due to rising crude oil prices and also a focus on the banks’ bad loan situation. “Having an experienced governor like Mr Rajan would bed the system down,” the article says on the fears of a rising inflation scenario. It also notes that Rajan’s has around 2,50000 FB fans on various devoted pages, while his European and US counterparts barely manages 10,000 on a combined basis. Clearly, the longer the government is taking to arrive at a final decision, the stronger Rajan’s clout is growing. “Raghuram Rajan, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, is a thinking man, a strong man — a much-needed and scarce combination. The country’s central banking institution needs a resilient brain, not a programmed robot to guide the fortunes of the rupee. Dr. Rajan’s is such a brain which, in addition, has the humour needed to protect it from robotising. But even as he shrugs criticisms off with a laugh, a great many if not most from the class of ‘intellectual India’ have led themselves into a self-censoring silence over Big Brotherisms,” writer and thinker Gopalkrishna Gandhi, said in an article titled The general drift of society in The Hindu recently.