It’s a terrible kind of demotion for both R. Rajan and A. Subramaniam … that after holding such high-powered, high-voltage position in the Government of India 🇮🇳, as RBI Governor and Chief Economic Advisor to GoI , they now take up a sinecure as piddling policy advisors to a State Government in a corner of South India where finances are in a bit of a bloody mess.
Both RR and AS while serving in their respective offices some years ago in India were found to be quite of out-of-synch and step with the philosophy, priorities and policy-thinking of the Modi Government … And as a result, both were politely shown the door when their tenure of office ended and there was no chance of their ever being given an extended one.
Both left their positions with hardly any achievements of glory to talk about. In fact RR was later found to have been dozing off at his desk while allowing the country’s biggest and “baddest” ever NPA problem (non-performing assets) to build up monstrously right under his aquiline nose and on his Guvnor’s watch.
And as for the other gentleman, AS was acknowledged in all of New Delhi to be as uninspiring an economic adviser as a drinks-serving 12th man in a local-clubhouse cricket match.
Given that both of them were at such odds with the powers that be in the “Ondriya” (Union) Government one wonders how now suddenly their Advisory nostrums and policy prescriptions they’re going to be offering to the Tamil Nadu Government will really help make the Centre-State relationship between Tamizhagam and Central Government any better than the terrible state in which it is today.
The “policy presence” of these ex-Central Government worthies in the State’s interactions with the Centre/Union going forward is only bound to further needlessly aggravate the already fragile, frosty, feisty and frayed engagement between Team Nirmala Sitharaman and Team PTR Palanivel Thyagarajan.
The advice of RR and AS to the State of Tamilnadu is thus going to be not only ineffective and unprofitable but is actually going to cause severe dysfunction in the management of its finances. We can expect only more and more areas of conflict and friction to be conceived and conjured by these 2 Advisors and placed adversarially between Centre and State at a time when Tamil Nadu needs actually only more not less solid support and cooperation, at least during the short to midterm, from the “ondriya arasu” of PM Modi. The choice of these two Advisors to serve the DMK Government is ill-advised and ill-timed.
For RR and AS of course it’s a jolly good plum opportunity to wreak at least some kind of moral vengeance on the Modi Government for the shoddy treatment they both received from it. It’s indeed a magnificent comeback through the backdoor for them again into the hallowed policy-making corridors of power-broking and lobbying in India. … from which they were forced to take an academic sabbatical. They are sure to now gloat in triumphant glee while mocking at the likes of M/s Subramaniam Swami and S. Gurumurthy— the prima donnas of “Swadeshi” economic think-tanking in the Sangh Parivar.
Together they have now both the motivation and the ability to cock a snook at the Government of India from the relatively safe sanctuary and constituency of a provincial backyard which Tamil Nadu will serve them as. And above all, to enable them to add some much-needed international flavour to the machinations and plots they will soon be concocting and brewing as “policy prescriptions” for the State, they can find truly no better and able an assistant than the colleague who comes on board with them—- Dr Esther Dufflo of MIT USA and Nobel Laureate!
And last but not the least of a pertinent and not entirely irrelevant comment to make here, I believe , is that with RR and AS (both Tamil Brahmins) now being inducted as venerable members into the highest advisory council of the DMK Government, the wind has been very effectively taken out of the sails of the Brahmins of Tamil Nadu …
In other words, the shrill voice of the Tambrahm petit-bourgeoisie of Tamil Nadu , often heard screaming on social media about the “anti-Brahmin mindset of this DMK government!” … has now been well and successfully shut up and shut down. No more can anyone say that Tambrahms are an emasculated or disempowered lot, can they?
Sudarshan Madabushi
Where do they throw the report of the Rangarajan Committee given during the AIDMK rule?
I have been in economic administration including being Finance Secretary of the then MP and also in the central govt planning and implementing many tax reforms like the introduction of PAN computerization of customs and Central Excise and so on.
This foursome will recommend selling of the over 100 PSUs of TN, scrapping many freebies like 100 units of electricity, firm collection of taxes, raising of electricity tariff and bus fairs so that both become no loss entities, complete digitalization of public services which are corrupt like vehicle registration, document registration and issue of building permits across the state.
We do not require the foursome for all these at probably a very high cost of per diem in dollars.
WILL STALIN AGREE.
I agree with you Sir … it’s not as if we don’t have within India and/or Tamil Nadu the needed bench-strength of both brains and domain expertise to deliver the same advisory as what is going to be expected of RR and AS .