Malhotra at RBI's helm: India's Goldilocks era?

The RBI governor can look back on his first year in office with satisfaction. But challenges abound and are likely to increase. So here’s hoping the rest of his term will be just as good

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“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” wrote Shakespeare in his play Henry IV. The English playwright was talking about a king by that name, not of any central bank governor.

In any case, even the Bank of England was founded only in 1694, almost a century after that play was written. A latter-day dramatist tempted to say the same of the head of a central bank would not be too far off the mark, though, whether it is about Jerome Powell, chairperson of the US Federal Reserve, who has had to face the prolonged ire of President Donald Trump, or anybody else with this unenviably difficult job. What about the 26th governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)? Ever since techie-turned-bureaucrat Sanjay Malhotra took charge on 11 December 2024, one event after another has rattled the certainty that helps frame monetary policy.