India’s economic newsmakers of 2008

The man who has been at the helm of all the three; by all accounts, Manmohan Singh is the year's chief newsmaker.

Who is the year’s main newsmaker? Currently the focus has shifted to the economic trinity of the finance ministry, the RBI and the Planning Commission. And the man who has been at the helm of all the three; by all accounts, Manmohan Singh is the year’s chief newsmaker.

To have P Chidambaram included in this piece is somewhat platitudinous. He made maximum news over the past four and a half years. It is sad to see him in a different role, though he has stirred up the sluggish waters of the home ministry.

The name that next comes to mind is YV Reddy, the former governor of the RBI, whose role was predominant when price rise turned out to be a thorn in the flesh for the ruling coalition at the Centre. The RBI kept raising rates, ironically when the Fed was cutting them. The decoupling theory seemed the hobby-horse of some financial analysts.

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We and China, it was then said, were largely immune to the mayhem being caused in the West — the collapse of Bear Stearns, Northern Rock, and all that.

Then the change in outlook came. And with it we got a new RBI governor, surprising though the decision was, because ever since the ICS days we have not had a serving officer under the government of India being appointed to that position. But the ICS was ICS. An officer then could serve as Assam governor and return to Delhi as Cabinet Secretary.

New RBI governor D Subbarao’s thinking was seen to be more in line with P Chidambaram’s, one assurance at least that two wings of our economic governance were not pulling different ways. The Fed is still cutting rates and so is our RBI. And the prices are coming down all the same. Goodbye to the decoupling theory.