RBI employees association bats for Viral Acharya

NEW DELHI: The Reserve Bank of India employee association on Monday came out firmly in support of its top brass against the government and said that undermining the central bank is a recipe for disaster and the government must desist.

“Let the two talk and sort out issues instead of the government trying to ride roughshod over RBI what they are trying at the expense of the nation,” the All India Reserve Bank Employees Association (AIRBEA) said in a statement.

Last week, RBI’s deputy governor Viral Acharya had raised concerns over the central bank's autonomy stating governments that did not respect their central banks’ independence would sooner or later incur the wrath of financial markets.


AIRBEA supported Acharya and said that undermining the central bank is a recipe for disaster and that Acharya’s observations comments about government's interventionist role vis-a-vis the RBI has created a flutter across the nation.

“This is, however, not a sudden outburst, but was waiting to happen due to long simmering discontent," the association noted in its statement.

AIRBEA observed that the hiatus between RBI and government has widened now and the deputy governor has spoken more "in disgust and despondency” due to continuous nibbling by the government and the finance ministry.

“Even the RBI board is being sought to be stuffed in a particular direction which would prompt the discerning people to look askance, and make it difficult for RBI to frame policies,” it said in its statement.

The association appealed to all right-minded people and experts to speak out and persuade government to amend, and let RBI do its jobs in an unfettered way as per statutes, mandates, practises.

In his lecture on October 26, giving a cricketing analogy, RBI’s Acharya had said a government's horizon of decision-making was rendered short, like the duration of a T20 match, by several considerations.

“There are always upcoming elections of some sort - national, state, mid-term," he said, adding "as elections approach, delivering on proclaimed manifestos of the past acquires urgency; where manifestos cannot be delivered upon, populist alternatives need to be arranged with immediacy."