Coronavirus: Ex RBI Guv Raghuram Rajan says ready to come to India if govt asks for assistance

57-year old Rajan, who served as RBI Governor for a three-year term, is currently working as a professor at the University of Chicago

Days after he wrote in a blog post that the government should call on people with proven expertise and capabilities to help it manage COVID-19 crisis in India, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan Saturday said he would return to India if his expertise was required to tackle the pandemic’s aftermath.

“This is a time of emergency… I am an Indian citizen and I am very, very closely engaged in seeing what’s happening to India and worry about it every day. So, I mean, any Indian citizen when called upon will do what is necessary in a time of need. So, I don’t think that’s an issue,” he said in an interview to NDTV, hours after being appointed an advisor to International Monetary Fund.

Follow live updates on coronavirus

“The answer is a straightforward yes,” Rajan told NDTV when asked whether he would return to India if asked for his assistance.

57-year old Rajan, who served as RBI Governor for a three-year term till September 2016, is currently working as a professor at the University of Chicago. He is one of the 11 external advisors IMF appointed on Friday for wider inputs on policy matters, including that of COVID-19.

But Rajan’s role will not be limited to suggesting measures directed only to containing COVID-19, he will also give his inputs on complex policy issues confronting the world.

Rajan has earlier served as chief economist at IMF from 2003 to 2007.

“There is much to do. The government should call on people with proven expertise and capabilities, of whom there are so many in India, to help it manage its response. It may even want to reach across the political aisle to draw in members of the opposition who have had experience in previous times of great stress like the global financial crisis,” Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan recently wrote on a LinkedIn blog post titled ‘Perhaps India’s Greatest Challenge in Recent Times’.

“He, however, had said that if the government insisted on driving everything from the Prime Minister's Office, with the same overworked people, it will do too little, too late”.