Keep The Ballast

- Chaitanya Kalbag

NARENDRA MODI’S FIRST TERM in office will be bracketed by malodorous stand-offs with two governors of the Reserve Bank of India. The bad blood between the central bank and the finance ministry is just one of the stains blotting the government’s copybook as it heads into a winter of discontent. It would be tempting to conclude that the last six months of this administration promise to be as unsmooth as the corresponding UPA-II period. But things are not that cut and dried.

Despite the fishy smell around the Rafale deal, the Modi government is nowhere near as venal as the dysfunctional Congress-led coalitions that ran our affairs between 2004 and 2014.

The public airing of dirty laundry by the RBI – most recently in the portentous speech by Deputy Governor Viral Acharya – is just the latest sign of institutional infirmity. Our eyebrows can rise no higher when, day after day, we wake up to the latest disturbance.