India’s central bank slashed interest rates in an emergency move on Friday to counter the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic after the federal government locked down the country in order to slow the spread of infections across the region.
With India’s growth tumbling to 4.5% from 8.1% in little more than a year, you’d be surprised to know that Shaktikanta Das has one of the easiest jobs in central banking. He just has to keep doing what he’s been doing since becoming governor of the Reserve Bank of India last December: cut interest rates. Fortunately, political will is on his side.
Central banking isn’t a contact sport like football, or even cricket. But the head of India’s central bank, who until recently was living and working in the U.S., is throwing some sharp elbows at his counterparts at the Federal Reserve. This is as close to a brawl as you’re likely to see in the genteel world of official monetary policy.
The Indian financial system suffers from a hangover of cronyism and corruption that have brought the government budgets on the verge of bankruptcy
A rupee in free fall; a terrifyingly wide current-account deficit; a corrupt, stagnant bureaucracy: In 1991, then-Finance Minister Manmohan Singh helped to rescue India’s economy from that near-death experience with a slew of liberalizing reforms, setting the stage for two decades of growth. Today, facing a similar, if less existential, crisis as India’s prime minister, Singh may well be the man standing in the way of a solution.
