Here's why Raghuram Rajan is one of the best central bank governors in the world
Reserve Bank of India’s 23rd governor, Raghuram Rajan recently featured among Time magazine's '100 Most Influential People in the World'. Terming Raghuram as "India's prescient banker," Time said he is among a rare breed of economic seers who steered India through the global crisis and fallout, playing a large role in making it one of the emerging-market stars of the moment.
While serving as the youngest chief economist of the IMF from 2003 to 2006, Time said Raghuram predicted the subprime crisis that would lead to the Great Recession, standing up to critics like former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who labeled him a "Luddite".
Raghuram studied at the Delhi Public School, Delhi. After having passed out from school he enrolled at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, for a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He graduated in 1985. He was awarded the Director's Gold Medal as the best all-round student. In 1987 he earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. After graduation and a brief stint at the Tata Administrative Services as a management trainee, he joined the doctoral program in management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 1991 he received a PhD for his thesis titled 'Essays on Banking'.
"Growth... is just one measure of performance," Rajan told students graduating from the National Institute of Bank Management in Pune last week. "The level of per capita GDP is also important. We are still one of the poorest large countries in the world on a per capita basis, and have a long way to go before we reasonably address the concerns of each one of our citizens," he added, reported The Economic Times.
As the governor of the RBI, Raghuram holds an esteemed position and it's a given that he is bound to enjoy a whole lot of perks. The greatest perk enjoyed by him is the fact that he gets to have signature across all currency notes in the country. Raghuram is also entitled to use a colonial bungalow on Carmicheal Road, a posh street that weaves along a ridge across South Mumbai- living opposite India's richest industrialists. According to Business Insider, as of June 30, 2015, Raghuram drew a salary of Rs 1.98 lakh per month. That's not much considering there are IIM graduates earning way more than that. It is said that this figure is up for revision.
According to Raghuram, “Our current growth certainly reflects the hard work of the government and the people of the country, but we have to repeat this performance for the next 20 years. We cannot get carried away by our current superiority in growth, for as soon as we believe in our own superiority and start distributing future wealth as if we already have it, we stop doing all that is required to continue growing... This movie has played too many times in India's past for us to not know how it ends."
To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
