Former Reserve Bank of IndiaGovernor Raghuram Rajanhas debunked the theory that Chicago University's refusal to extend his leave forced his departure from the central bank
. He has stressed that leave from the university was never an issue, and that he wanted to stay longer at the RBI to complete the unfinished task of clean-up of banks' balance sheets of non-performing assets (NPAs). Mr Rajan adds that there was no proposal from the government for him to continue.
A former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr Rajan is the first governor since 1992 not to have got a five-year term. Mr Rajan, who was appointed the RBI governor by the previous UPA government, had on several occasions run into differences of opinion with the present NDA government.
The outspoken professor of economics is widely credited with having anticipated the 2008 global financial meltdown a couple of years ahead of the turmoil. However, the former RBI chief soon became an eyesore for many in the establishment, not only because of his views on economic reforms and independence of the RBI but also on social issues. He had brushed aside over-obsession with growth numbers, pointing out that people sometimes get "overly fixated with a particular growth number", though figures like 7.6 per cent and 8 per cent are within the same range.
Do you think that the demonetisation exercise was successful in curbing black money?
There are two issues here. One is stock, and the other is the flow of black money. As far as the stock goes, we still have to see how much of black money is unearthed in the ongoing investigations across the country. That again depends on how quickly the investigations are completed. The hope was that if a chunk of money did not come back into the system, you wouldn't have had to go through the investigation. Now that almost the entire value of the demonetised currency has returned to the banking system, there is an urgent need to expedite the investigations.
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