Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who completed more than 100 days on Bharat Jodo Yatra was joined by former Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan in Rajasthan on December 14. During this time, Rahul conducted an informal interview with the former RBI governor about several things ranging from the country’s economy to inequalities prevailing due to the pandemic.
When Rahul Gandhi asked the former governor about his views on the Indian economy and the world economy, Raghuram Rajan predicted that next year was going to be more difficult than the current year. “Growth is going to be slow in the world in general. People are raising interest rates, and it brings down growth. India is also going to beat it. Indian interest rates have also gone up, but Indian exports are slowing quite a bit. India’s inflation problem is more of a commodity problem and that is also going to be negative for growth. I think that we would be lucky if we do 5% next year,” says Raghuram.
Speaking of measuring the rate of growth, he said, “The problem with growth numbers is that you have to understand what measure with respect to. If you had a terrible quarter last year and you are measuring with it, then with respect to that, you look very good. So ideally what you do is, you look before the pandemic and look at now. If you look at 2022 and 2019, it's about 2% a year, and it's too low for us,” he said.
Raghuram felt that India’s growth rate had been slowing even before the pandemic and it had further contributed to reducing it. He added that though the pandemic was a part of the problem in reduced growth, he said that India was slowing before the pandemic as well. “We have gone down from 9% to 5%. We haven't really generated reforms which will generate growth.”
Discussing the prevailing inequalities in the country, Rahul said, “Only four to five people in the country are becoming billionaires and are entering into all sorts of businesses, while the rest of the people are behind.”
Speaking about inequalities, Raghuram said, the gap between the rich and poor had increased during the pandemic. “This sort of inequality is one of the biggest problems that the country is facing. It is not just about the industrialists, but also the upper middle class. They had the luxury to work from home, but the poor had to go to factories, and the factories were closed down. The divide, which was already there, increased during the pandemic.”