As September closed, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram acceded to a long-pending demand by government by slashing lending rates by an unprecedented half percentage point. But on that day he also said: "I am Raghuram Rajan. I do what i do," and in a recent interview, he underlined the import of that by tangentially reprimanding the government that business and communal disharmony can't go together.
"The emphasis that Prime Minister and Finance Minister have been putting on this being an economy which is trying to get it right and move forward on sustainable basis. I think that does not fit well with these kinds of incidents. And we need to figure out the way to reduce and certainly, I think, there is law and order issue there," he told journalist Karan Thapar on India Today channel.
This was in response to Thapar's question on whether India's image was being impacted on incidents like love jihad, conversion, ghar vapsi and the recent killings, an apparent reference to the murder of a man in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh over rumours of eating beef.
On his larger than expected 0.50% cut in interest rate last week, Rajan said it was part of the process of getting investment and asked if the rate cut was enough to boost growth rate, he said, "The real deficiency in our economy today is private investment is not picking up as it should at this stage of the cycle. The key concern of policy maker is how to get it started. How we get it going."
(With inputs by PTI)
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