Washington: With a "little bit of euphoria" surrounding him with the arrest of the Indian rupee's slide, RBI's new governor, Raghuram Rajan, has sought to temper expectations saying, "I am not a superman."
Portraying himself as a regular guy with "a wife and two kids" , he told a Washington audience on Saturday what the country's central bank could do or not do.
"Expectations are high. There is a little bit of euphoria in India," said Rajan, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and economic adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at an event at the Institute of International Finance.
But "clearly I am not a superman" , said Rajan, who has often been portrayed in the media as a "rock star" of finance . "We can do more than what a central bank in an industrial country can do. But we can in some ways do less," he said. "On where we can do more, clearly there are a lot of low hanging fruit in the financial sector," he said.
Rajan, who was here to attend the just concluded annual IMF-World Bank meetings , said emerging market economies were less understood and financial sector reforms can be incredibly positive for growth going forward. "I think, with the financial sector reforms, coupled with the real sector reforms, the growth turnaround should be on its way," he said.
He noted that the Indian government was doing a "fair amount of reform" which needs little bit of time for the results to show up. "The problem of being in academics and then getting into these positions is there is a well-documented trail of thinking," said Rajan.
India must not be seen as a country in crisis, he said, days after declaring that New Delhi would not run to the IMF for money for at least the next five years and maybe even beyond. "We have $280 billion of forex reserves. Come on!" he exclaimed, adding that India was, in fact, lending to the IMF. "I think the perception should change now."
