VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 213 Date: 07.08.2017
Contents:
1. Arvind Panagariya's Departure
2. RBI Rate Cut
3. Refer Dokalam Issue to ICJ
Arvind Panagariya's Departure
Arvind Panagariya, the Vice Chairman of the Niti Aayog, the new re-incarnation of the stodgy Planning Commission, has left! He claims that he had come for a term of 2 years and with it getting over, he had to leave. He also says that the Columbia University job in academia that he is returning to is the kind of job that he will 'never' get again. If you read between the lines in these statements then you will see that Panagariya found the 'hot seat' a little too hot for his liking and not willing to risk his reputation any further, he decided to pull the plug on the assignment. It is not easy in government to get things moving and this is what he realised since even in academia things move faster and your peer level or those with whom you interact there are not sluggish and overly bureaucratic.
And for the kind of job that he will 'never' get again - Was leading the economic charge of the world's 'fastest growing' economy and with major 'reforms' like Demonetisation, Cashless or Less-Cash Economy and GST, with other 'earth-shaking' measures to follow, was this not an assignment to challenge what he has in academia. Come on, Panagariya, come clean and say that hiding your face in books back at Columbia University was safer than wait for all the mess of the reforms undertaken to unravel. One must, however, compliment Panagariya on getting his timing right but the sad thing is that when these people come to take up the assignments, it is 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' but as soon as they find things not going their way, they are the first to bail out from a sinking ship or slink away noiselessly. Where is the patriotism then?
RBI Rate Cut
We have the RBI Governor Urjit Patel and the institution standing up for what it believes in and reducing the interest rates by only 0.25%. This in the face of the deliberate talking down of the interest rates which had started off about a month back with Arvind Subramaniam, the Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry, extolling the virtues that would be bestowed on the Indian economy in the event of a substantial rate cut. Then the papers since then were plugging in with various news items on a sectoral basis as to how lower interest rates would rejuvenate the economy. Even until yesterday, 2nd August, the media was full of the slump in sales in the auto industry and how an interest rate cut would give a fillip to sales with auto loans getting cheaper. The new 6% lending rate has been stated to be the lowest since 2010 which the government is not happy about since it was expecting a deeper cut. Though in this assumption the Finance Ministry may be right but then a sharper fall would have set the cat among the pigeons which the RBI was probably unwilling to risk now. Inflation is still not down and there is a gap it seems from what the economic indices communicate and what the prices in the marketplace are reflecting. The government in its own interest and for the sake of credibility needs to close this gap. But all credit to the RBI for showing that it still has some spine since during and just after demonetisation one would have thought that it was made of rubber. But Urjit Patel as King of RBI is still in his counting house counting all his worthless money in terms of demonetised notes and is yet to come out with the figures of how many of the Rs. 500 & Rs. 1000 notes came back.
Refer Dokalam Issue to ICJ
On the Dokalam stand-off with China we should refer the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague. The benefits of this are two-fold. The first is that the Dokalam issue fires that are running high now will be doused and it will be pushed to the back-burner. Second, a clear decision acceptable to all three countries involved - India, China & Bhutan - would emerge. Though China is known not to accept the ICJ's rulings sometimes.
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