Amid some controversy over the ‘one-eyed king’ remark, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan observed on Wednesday his comments had been taken out of context and clarified he was not denigrating the country’s success.
Speaking at the convocation of the National Institute of Bank Management (NIBM), Rajan said while the domestic newspapers headlined the phrase ‘in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king’ and offered the surrounding context, few had read beyond the headlines.
“So, the interview became moderately controversial with the implication that I was denigrating our success rather than emphasising the need to do more. My general point is every phrase or word a public figure speaks is intensely wrung out for meaning,” Rajan explained.
According to the governor, when words are ‘hung out to dry out of context’ as in a newspaper headlines, it becomes fair game for anyone who wants to ‘fill in meaning to create mischief’. “Worst of course are words or proverbs that have common usage elsewhere because those can most easily and deliberately be misinterpreted,” he added.
He explained that his intent in saying it was an offhand comment in an interview and was ‘to signal that our outperformance was accentuated because world growth was weak’.
The governor was recently criticised by the political brass for his comments on India at an interview in Washington last week. Commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman was quoted by agencies as saying that she was ‘not happy with the choice of words’.
While India, Rajan said, is the fastest growing large country in the world, with its manufacturing capacity utilisation at around 70%, the potential for growth is undoubtedly higher.
Comparing India to China, he said that the Chinese economy, smaller than us in the 1960s is now five times our size. “An average Chinese citizen is over four times richer than an average Indian,” he said, adding that as a central banker he has to be pragmatic and I cannot get euphoric that India’s is the fastest-growing economy.
“Our current growth certainly reflects the hard work of the government and the people of the country but we have to repeat this performance for the next twenty years before we can give every Indian a decent livelihood,” Rajan said.
The governor said that India has to deliver upon its promises to the world because India is still the poorest country on a per capita basis, among the BRICS. Referring to India’s inability to deliver in the past, the governor said, “This movie has played too many times in India’s past for us not to know how it ends.”
He also said he wants to apologise to a section of the population that he hurt, the blind. “After all, the proverb suggests that a one-eyed man is better than a blind one. So I am indeed sorry for implying the blind were otherwise than capable,” he said.