If you are pliant and subservient, you don’t get respect from staff: Raghuram Rajan

Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on Friday said if a central bank head is “pliant and subservient”, he risks losing the respect of his team members.

He, however, added that RBI governors, once in office, “develop backbone very quickly”. He also advocated protecting the governor’s term on the lines of the judiciary. Rajan, the first RBI governor not to get a second term in two decades, said certainty of tenure is essential for a central bank chief to perform better.

“If you are pliant and subservient, you don’t get respect from your staff members. How long are you going to be in an institution where people talk behind your back that you are so subservient? So, people (in the office) develop backbone very quickly,” Rajan said here late this evening while launching his book ‘I Do What I Do’. He was answering a question about a scenario where the government may want to place a pliant person as the governor because it feels RBI is impeding its policies.

“Institutions give a certain amount of backbone to the leaders. Often, people who are really pounding on the table for finance ministry’s rights, when they move over to the governorship, pound on the table for …read more