Can the RBI print unlimited currency? Is the RBI governor’s salary and perks anywhere close to what other government officials get? Ex-RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has all the answers.
📹: Raj Shamani
📹: Raj Shamani
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The biggest perk is the house. If we sold the house, we'd get about 450 crores.
00:06So, how do we decide who will be on the note?
00:08You can tamper with the color, you can tamper with the size, but you can't tamper with the face.
00:17What is the role of the RBI governor? Like what does the RBI governor do?
00:20This currency, you have to maintain its value.
00:24Okay.
00:25How do you maintain its value? You ensure, one, you don't print too much of it.
00:31Two, you print as much as the economy needs.
00:36Three, you try and build confidence over time by keeping inflation low.
00:45Because the value of money decreases because inflation increases.
00:52So, you try and keep inflation controlled and for that you do a whole bunch of things.
00:58You raise interest rates so as to keep people from borrowing too much, from spending too much.
01:04What is the basic salary of an RBI governor and what are the perks you get?
01:08I don't know what the current salary is. In my time, it used to be four lakhs a year.
01:13Four lakhs a year?
01:14A year.
01:15Okay.
01:16The biggest perk is the house.
01:17Okay. You get like a really big house?
01:19You get a really big house in a really, a few blocks away from Dhirubhai Ambani's house.
01:25In Mumbai?
01:26In Mumbai, on Malabar Hill.
01:28Okay.
01:29You know, did a calculation at one point. If we sold the house, we lease it.
01:34We don't, we have a long-term lease from the Port Authority.
01:38We get about 450 crores and then we invest that and then I could pay the entire top brass of the RBI, their salary.
01:49And we just move into an apartment.
01:52But it's a splendid house.
01:55What are the other perks you get?
01:57You get a car, you get a lot of staff to maintain that house. It's an old house.
02:02So, it needs maintenance.
02:04And the car is like, you get like a really fancy luxury car?
02:07No, no, no. You get a decent car, but it's not like, you can't, you can't, you know.
02:13Get like a Rolls Royce or a Mercedes.
02:15You can't in a poor country do that. You should not do that.
02:18But four lakhs for an RBI government, do you think it's less or it's appropriate or it's more?
02:24It's on par with the, you know, secretary, the, I think it's on par with the cabinet secretary.
02:32It's not, it's what government officials get.
02:35You don't get the other perks that government officials get.
02:39You don't get a pension, but you get, I think, medical facilities.
02:44So, post you're retired, you don't get pension?
02:46I don't get a pension.
02:47In India, we have Mahatma Gandhi, but there's no one else.
02:50So, how do we decide who will be on the note?
02:52We can't agree on anybody else.
02:54You can tamper with the color, you can tamper with the size, but you can't tamper with the face.
02:59Because once you pick a face, it becomes very, very controversial.
03:03There will be a lot of debate on who's more important, who's less important.
03:07And then once you open it up, then everybody wants their political leaders on the face.
03:14So, I think it's maybe just continue with Mahatma Gandhi and bring everybody else out in stamps.