Understanding the RBI's central board

The board is a powerful supervisory entity. Let Shaktikanta Das restore its position, quieten tensions and allow the RBI to get on with it

Viral Acharya, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has a knack for grabbing headlines. After the A D Shroff memorial lecture of October 26, 2018, where he forcefully made the case for central bank independence, he apparently stated during the RBI's central board (CB) meeting on December 14 that fundamental changes in the role of the board along the lines of the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England would require a full-fledged reconstitution of the board. Presumably what Acharya meant was that if the RBI is to be a wholly board-driven central bank, the present