Raghuram Rajan to students: Be articulate in expressing independence

Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on April 6 said the country provides a lot of freedom to its people to air their views but one has to be more articulate while expressing independence.

"There is tremendous space for you to exert your independence in our country despite all pressures. Of course, you have to articulate why you are using your independence the way that you are using," Rajan told a group of B-school students who assembled for a contest at the RBI headquarters.

In the contest four teams-- Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Delhi, College of Engineering & Technology,Bhubaneswar, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad and IIM-Raipur made to the final rounds. Two teams-- IIFT, and IIM-Raipur secured the first position, while JNTU and CET were the runner-ups.

The governor also said though RBI's job from outside looks glamorous there is lot of hard work and pressure. He emphasised on having a strong framework for formulating a policy and said it is equally important to take broader public along with you to bring in any reforms.

"One of the most important aspects of policy making is to have a framework, to have a sense of why you are doing things, how are you going about it and how every new development fits into your framework, as it is important to make people understand the policy objectives", Rajan said.

"If you want to make changes, you want to reform, you have to take the larger public along with you. That's the way that the political establishment also goes along with you. You have to explain to them why it makes sense," he added.

Rajan said RBI does a lot of analysis and develops logic but when it goes to the public it presents in a simpler manner. "I never bring up regression when I talk to the political establishment in Delhi, but I certainly use the kind of data that we have to make the policy recommendations," the academic-turned central banker told the participants.