Pune, April 21: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has cautioned against euphoria over high growth rate saying it has “a long way to go.”
He said India was still one of the poorest large countries in the world on a per capita basis and have a long way to go before reasonably addressing the concerns of each one of its citizens.
He said that the current growth rate needs to be sustained for the next 20 years to ensure a “decent livelihood” for every Indian.
The average Chinese citizen is over four times richer than average Indian, Rajan said adding among the BRICS (group) India had the lowest per capita GDP.
The former IMF Chief Economist said, “As a central banker who has to be pragmatic, I cannot get euphoric if India is the fastest growing large economy”.
Rajan said, “We can’t get carried away by our current superiority in growth, for as soon as we believe in our own superiority and start distributing future wealth as if we already have it, we stop doing all that is required to continue growing. This movie has played too many times in our past for us to not know how it ends.”
Underlining the need to change perceptions, he said a high growth rate can be delivered over a long term only by “implementing, implementing, and implementing”.
“The sobering thought is we have a long way to go before we can claim we have arrived,” Rajan averred, while addressing students at the convocation of the National Institute of Bank Management.
He, however, apologised to the visually-impaired people who were hurt by his use of this proverb.
