Reserve Bank of India: A Loss of Face and Credibility?

NEW DELHI: Till the 17th century money was mostly commodity money like gold or silver, which were prized by most people and hence had a known ascribable value. This became the basis of exchanges of goods and services among people. Since metal coins were not always easy to carry and as transactions became bigger and many, the merchants started issuing promissory notes against them. To bring order into this system the states evolved central banks to regulate and monitor the system.

Soon central or designated banks became the sole issuers of such paper or notes. Even though valued commodities like gold and silver was the physical collateral on the basis of which notes were issued, the credibility of the note issuer was central to its success.

It soon evolved that more than the collateral the credibility of the central bank was crucial to ensure that central banks could issue notes way beyond the value of the gold and silver held in their vaults. This system became so enshrined and as the credibility of central banks kept rising, it was inevitable that the direct linkage to gold and silver ended.

Even this residual linkage ended one day in 1974 when President Richard Nixon delinked the dollar from bullion. Soon other central banks followed suit and the value promised was mostly related to the dollar, and trust and credibility were the only collateral against which people and associations transacted with their notes – money. In this way the trust in the words on every multi denomination rupee – “I promise to pay the bearer sum of -----“ is it’s only worth.

The original objective of central banking was monetary and financial stability. Following the Great Depression in the USA and the postwar Keynesian revolution, macroeconomic stability became the main objective. Even more son when gold was not the anchor to prevent value from drifting. Thus credibility mattered even more.

India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India came into being on 1 April 1935. The general superintendence and direction of the RBI is entrusted with a 21-member Central Board of Directors: the Governor, 4 Deputy Governors, 2 Finance Ministry representatives, 10 government-nominated directors to represent important elements from India's economy, and 4 directors to represent local boards headquartered at Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and New Delhi.

This spread of representation is meant to ensure that all sectoral and regional interests are considered in its policy making.

Inevitably a degree of political patronage soon began emerging in the choice of persons to the RBI’s board. Some clear undesirables managed to get in due to political patronage, but the professional stature of the Governors ensured that extraneous considerations were filtered out and even the government was kept at an arms length from the institution. This kept intact the vestment of professional credibility that is so integral to its everyday stewardship of the nation’s macroeconomic situation and control over the banking sector.

But it seems to have slipped somewhat from that lofty perch after the departure of Raghuram Rajan back to his tenured faculty position in the University of Chicago’s vaunted Economics Department.

I personally think Rajan preferred to keep the RBI’s and his own credibility intact rather to bow down to political directions.

To be sure Urjit Patel has the professional qualifications but the stature and competence needed to ensure the nations continued trust and to stave off unwanted and even incompetent pressures mostly comes only with time and often never at all.

Consider this. A Secretary level official of the GOI headed the selection committee that chose him to this exalted position. It is important not to forget that while the RBI is a part of government, it must not be seen as a creature of the government that does as told.

PM Narendra Modi is not only a social radical but somewhat of an economic radical also. He has a well-known propensity to impose his will on others, and as long as it works it seems good. Even the gods are known to be fallible. Hence in an open political and market driven economic system government by fiat is undesirable and near impossible. But in this case it has clearly boomeranged. Instead of being a swift surgical strike it turned into a carpet-bombing of many vital sectors of the economy.

This clearly begs the question as to what the custodian of our financial integrity and macroeconomic stability; the RBI was doing when the axe descended on the nation? Clearly the RBI was not a part of the decision. It was peremptorily ordered to do what was done in its name. The pretence of the RBI deciding this step was clearly abandoned when the Prime Minister personally made his dramatic announcement on November 8 last year.

Demonetization is an extreme step. It usually happens when an economy has become chaotic and on the verge of financial anarchy, and/or when values of currency plummets. Runaway hyperinflation is a typical condition when the bitter medicine of demonetization is administered. By demonetization you strip a currency of its utility as legal tender. As we saw not very long ago in countries like Russia where the multiples of the old ruble were reissued as new rubles.

Demonetization when inflicted on an economy that is relatively orderly and growing, as it was in India, becomes an act of vandalism to disrupt it. Even if the pile up of high denomination notes with some people and their integrity was a cause for concern, less disruptive means were available. For a start the exchange of old Rs.500 and Rs.1000 notes could have been more orderly by giving people a comfortable period of time to exchange them.

Suppose we had fixed May 30, 2017 as the cutoff date for the exchange of the old notes with new notes, most if not all the cash in the parallel economy would have still come to the banks with the required details of the depositor. This would have ensured the orderly withdrawal of old notes and their replacement with new notes without the collapse of economic order that we have recently seen. Of course we will get out of it. But what is lost is lost forever.

But the problem is much more has been lost. The Reserve Bank of India has lost a good deal of its most prized asset -credibility. What is a holder of a rupee supposed to think of the worth of the RBI governor’s promise to pay the bearer a promised some on presentation at anyplace where such notes are meant to be exchanged.

Clearly the RBI governor has lost face and the institution has had its credibility whittled down.

(Mohan Guruswamy is a Harvard scholar and an economist who has held advisorial positions in government)