Mint Quick Edit | Which way will RBI’s half-new MPC panel lean?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The government has named Ram Singh, Saugata Bhattacharya and Nagesh Kumar as the three new external members of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy committee (MPC) to replace Ashima Goyal, Shashanka Bhide and Jayanth Varma, whose terms are expiring.
Bhattacharya, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, has been a practising economist, while Singh and Kumar are from academia; Singh is director of the Delhi School of Economics and Kumar of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development. The MPC has the RBI governor and two others from the central bank as its other three members.
Policy calls go by a vote, although the governor’s tie-breaking power gives the central bank weight in case of a split between internal and external members. Usually, though, dissent is low-key.
With a panel of individuals well versed with macroeconomics, one may think a consensus is natural. But macromanagement has grown so complex that there is often space for argument.
RBI will soon have to determine if and when to switch focus from price stability to economic growth. What the new MPC members make of it will be under watch.
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