Amending Rules: Modi Govt Takes Away RBI reserves cunningly

Hyderabad: The Government of India headed by Narendra Modi has taken away, in the recent months, Rs 1.65 lakh crore from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as a result of which the RBI’s reserves have come down to Rs 30,000 crore.

This indicates that not only the Banks, but also the RBI is on the path to insolvency. Is this not an alarming bell, questions Vijay Ghorpade an economist, in a post on the social media.

He laments that the common citizen is not taking note of such alarming economic matters now-a-days as they are engrossed in the religious matters. The people may not even know that before 2014, no Government had ever taken the entire surplus money-total profit of the RBI.

Only a portion was taken as a dividend by the Government. In 2018 when Urjit Patel was the Governor of RBI, the Modi government demanded all the profit money from the Bank. Patel however, refused to do so citing the Rules, which led to his resignation from the Governorship.

Then the Government set up a six-member committee under the chairmanship of former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan, which paved the way for the Government. Until then the maximum amount taken from the RBI as a dividend was Rs 50/55 thousand crore. During the Bangladesh war, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had asked the RBI for Rs 70,000 crore, but the RBI clearly refused, and the government had accepted it.

The economist says that the Modi government had changed the rules of the RBI for its (government) advantage. The government had not only amended the RBI rules, but also changed a number of Laws for Corporates and companies, white washing their deeds. In the last three to five years, 50,000 companies went bankrupt, the Bank’s loans, sank and 70,000 new companies came up with new loans. This is the economics of this Government.

Today, if the RBI does not have the expected Rs 74,000 crore profit and whatever little amount there is, is taken away by the Government then who will save the sinking Banks? Instead of understanding whether Qutub Minar is a Vishnu stambha or whether there is a Shivaling in Gyanvapi, people should understand where the Government’s economic policy has brought the country to.

Cunning way Vijay Ghorpade contended that comparing the eight-year period of former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh from 2006 to 2014 with that of Modi’s from 2014 to 2022, it becomes evident that during Dr Singh’s tenure, Goverment took only Rs 1 01,679 crore from RBI, whereas during Modi’s regime, the amount taken is Rs. 5,74,976 crore – that is five times more. “This is called ‘corruption done cunningly through the system’, he stated.