In the case of
Raghuram Rajan, I am not qualified enough to comment, but I was given
to understand that he is very knowledgeable, capable, talented etc but
abysmally poor in his knowledge of ground realities of functioning
Indian economic scenario and tries to extrapolate his wonderful
knowledge acquired from the great Western economic models , especially
the model of US of A as he learned from his text books which operate
strictly by rules and under the eagle eye of a highly policed state. But
India is a different story, for example scams of the magnitude of 2G,
CWG, Coal all at more or less within a span of 5 years would have
crippled an economy totally but in India it was just headlines for some
days , lively debates increasing TRP rating for some news channels
engaging lot of verbal nonsense, political circus item for politicians
of various parties etc . It did not cripple the economy because India
has several and actually more powerful parallel economies with their own
unwritten efficient operational mechanism, India is the classical
example of what the great American Economist and its ambassador to India
kenneth Galbraith termed as 'functional anarchy'. we all experience it
on the roads everyday where 95% do not follow any rules of traffic but
despite that almost 99% reach their destination safely and one percent
meet their fate for the collective mistake of the 95% per cent. This
anarchy manifests itself everywhere , even in place where we are
supposed to observe sanctity and reverence as in temples. when it is
beneficial to us or when it does not affect us directly very much we
have no complaints or we do not bother about it because we are used to
it or we conveniently philosophize it with various irrelevant
justifications including luck, chance, astrological factors etc. So, to
operate or function in sensitive posts in such scenarios what is needed
is humility combined with an ear to have wide consultations with
experienced hands and diplomatically jostle along co operating or at
least making a pretense of cooperating with all the existing system
based [if we can call it as such ] control mechanisms and ensuring a
certain amount of convincing assurance to all the stake holders which
include a vast majority of unorganized lenders, borrowers, business
operators [including unlicensed factories/manufacturing units,
unauthorized financial institutions, unrecognized educational
institutions [some times better than recognized ones in quality],
manufacturers of duplicate of many big international brands[ how many
computer users use original windows software in India including some big
corporates]. I remember a real case of a manufacturer of duplicate MICO
spark plug [a Gujarathi biz man sending it through a original dealer of
MICO spark plug to the original manufacturers as a return of damaged or
disfunctional spark plug and the original manufacturer returning it
back saying that there is nothing wrong with the piece and it was in
fact as per all standards a perfect one, upon which the dealer asked the
original manufacturers whether he would be interested in getting it
manufactured in India at one 25th the original cost of manufacturing and
the original company willingly outsourced it . there are many case
studies like that in India, China, Korea, Taiwan etc. The entire gray
market for all the top brands in the world are run by few Sindhi biz
groups and the very people in US of A and Europe buy from these fellows.
present day world economics is euphemistically called by many names like
globalization, MNCs etc but in reality there are many islands of
lobbies, mafias of all rule breakers in tacit links with rule makers who
operate ,sorry manipulate, the markets, commerce, trade , economics,
trends etc. So it is indeed a very tough task for even the most well
informed and extremely knowledgeable persons to hold vital posts
involving every day accountability [ a non existent factor in Indian
operations] and constant watch and scrutiny by all the stake holders as
well as bench sitters and media muffs who will sit on judgment on
everything and it is all the more tough for a person who has had lessor
experience of regional ground realities. It is as difficult and as
uncomfortable for chaps born and brought up in metros in upper middle
class or rich households to squat on the ridges /sloping banks of a
paddy field [varappu] and slide the shit on the fields covering all
private parts but the village folks do it everyday with extreme ease. I
use this simile purposely because of the difficulty involved and
delicate nature of the task
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