RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan is not mincing words, tells employees to penalise rich and mighty defaulters too

For RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, a defaulter is a defaulter, whether the person is rich and mighty or weak and poor.

In his New Year message, Rajan told his employees to penalise the wrongdoers, without differentiating.

"This belief feeds on itself. No one wants to go after the rich and well-connected wrongdoer, which means they get away with even more. If we are to have strong sustainable growth, this culture of impunity should stop. Importantly, this does not mean being against riches or business, as some would like to portray, but being against wrong-doing," said Rajan in his message.

Rajan wants banks to clear bad loans and get back money that people have borrowed from them.

"Our regulations are not always very clear, our staff sometimes is neither well-informed of our own regulations nor willing to help the customer, our responses are occasionally extraordinarily slow and bureaucratic (in the sense of hiding behind opaque rules or avoiding a decision rather than taking a sensible course of action)," he said.

Rajan also spoke about deadlines and the need to deliver on time, adding that employees should also evolve themselves.

“We need to continuously review and renew ourselves if we have to compete with the best in the world. Reporting officers will need to let their subordinates know every quarter how their performance has been so that year-end evaluations don't come as a surprise,” Rajan said.