New Delhi: Suppressing criticism is a “sure fire recipe” for policy mistakes, cautioned former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan in a hard-hitting blog, arguing that people in authority should tolerate criticism.
In the post published Sunday, Rajan also said it is only criticism that prompts a government to take “periodic course corrections to policy”.
“If every critic gets a phone call from a government functionary asking them to back off, or gets targeted by the ruling party’s troll army, many will tone down their criticism. The government will then live in a pleasant make-believe environment, until the harsh truth can no longer be denied,” Rajan said while recalling the achievements of noted jurist and doyen of liberalism in India Nani Palkhivala.
The former RBI governor, however, came under fire for what people considered his criticism of the Narendra Modi government. Several people on social media made personal attacks on him, while some targeted his tenure as RBI chief and others criticised him for condemning the government’s work while residing outside the country. Rajan is currently a professor of finance at the University of Chicago.
Many also mocked him for focusing on dissent instead of the ongoing economic crisis.
https://twitter.com/RMantri/status/1178983512247914497?s=20
If we thought RRR bond would be ruminating and enlightening on repeated regulatory failures including the latest instance of PMC, he is still on dissent/intolerance??
— Prasanna Viswanathan (@prasannavishy) October 1, 2019
https://twitter.com/harshmadhusudan/status/1178981936431153152?s=20
#RaghuramRajan @RaghuramRRajan Like many he failed to do a good job of exposing true inflation in India. India has economy driven by services sector which contributes more than 50% has a very less weightage in inflation index. Still lot better than current governor.
— saif (@saif57417137) October 1, 2019
Poda! After messing up things, #RaghuRamRajan comes to pontificate
Governments should learn to tolerate criticism, suppressing it can lead to mistakes: Raghuram Rajan https://t.co/9e3TtziBwg via @economictimes
— Suresh N (@surnell) October 1, 2019
Rajan’s observations come in the backdrop of the Modi government removing Rathin Roy and Shamika Ravi from the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council as they were critical of the government’s policies.
Ravi, the director of research at Brookings India, and Roy, the director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, had questioned the government’s decision to borrow funds from overseas markets through the sale of sovereign bonds.
Rajan, too, had earlier cautioned the government about the consequences of raising funds through overseas sovereign bonds.
“Undoubtedly, some of the criticism, including in the press, is ill-informed, motivated, and descends into ad-hominem personal attacks. I have certainly had my share of those in past jobs. However, suppressing criticism is a sure fire recipe for policy mistakes,” Rajan said in his Sunday post, adding that governments that suppress public criticism “do themselves a gross disservice”.
(With inputs from PTI)
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