Shaktikanta Das, RBI's new boss is quintessential bureaucrat's bureaucrat

A seasoned IAS officer who is close to the current government, will Das find an independent voice as the new central bank boss?

When the new Re 1 banknote was issued by the Ministry of Finance in May 2017, the joke that made its way through North Block was that senior bureaucrat Shaktikanta Das, who had already missed out on the job once, would eventually become the next governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

This was because the Re 1 notes carried his signature – traditionally, it is the RBI chief who is a signatory to any new currency note that is printed.

Because of the Re 1 note’s unique history – it is printed by the finance ministry and not the central