Face-off or glasnost? It will be clearer if govt goes ahead with reforms

It is possible that the RBI governor's speech in Gandhinagar was an attempt at pushing the envelope on reforms in PSBs

It will be simplistic to describe the recent statement from Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel on the need to make bank regulation ownership-neutral only as a face-off between the central bank and the Union finance ministry. The implications of what Patel said last week are far more significant than just what a face-off usually means. 

It’s true that Patel’s statement was a response to an earlier statement of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, wherein he had held the regulator accountable for the Rs 129-billion letters of undertaking (LoU) scam involving state-controlled Punjab National Bank. The minister had also said