Shaktikanta Das0:00
I have no authority to just write a letter to government and then release it to the media. It's not like, you know, in the political space, for example, there are leaders who write a letter to the government and immediately release it to the media. That is for a different purpose. Here, the first right of receiving the letter lies with the government; the addressee should get it first.
So the MPC will meet tomorrow and we will prepare a report and we will send it to the government. There is also some amount of speculation about what the Reserve Bank will write, and some people have gone on to conclude based on what I replied in a post-monetary policy press conference. They asked whether the RBI will release it; I said no, the RBI will not release it. It's for the addressee, the government, to decide and do the needful in this regard.
Now questions have been raised about transparency of monetary policy, transparency of what we are doing. This is such a sensitive bit of information, how can RBI keep it under wraps? The entire monetary policy framework, which was instituted in 2016, is based on very strong principles of transparency. The minutes of the meeting are released as soon as the meeting is over. The resolution of the MPC gives out what are the decisions and why those decisions have been taken. After two weeks, the minutes of the individual members are also released, so that everyone knows who said what and how it facilitated our decision making.
So the expectation is that since we released the monetary policy resolution on the day of the MPC, why don't we release the letter itself also on the day of the MPC? You see, the MPC resolution is meant for the entire economy. Immediately, the market should know what is the RBI's decision. Citizens of the country should know what is the RBI's decision. Unlike that, in the case of a letter which I write, which the Reserve Bank writes to the government, it's a report sent under a law. I don't have the privilege, the authority, or the luxury to release a letter like this, which is written under the law as per the legal requirement, before even the addressee gets it.
There's so much communication which goes on between the Reserve Bank and the government both ways; we don't share each and every letter. But that is not to assume that the contents of this letter and the report are going to be perennially under wraps. They will be available in the public domain at some point. So the limited point that I was making—and I don't want to be defensive about it because that is the legal position—I mean, I have no authority to just write a letter to government and then release it to the media. It's not like, you know, in the political space, for example, there are leaders who write a letter to the government and immediately release it to the media. That is for a different purpose. Here, the first right of receiving the letter lies with the government; the addressee should get it first. In due course, sooner than later, it will be out. The parliament will know about it, the standing committee of parliament will know about it. The context will be known. So it is not as if transparency is being compromised in any manner. And I want to say it very emphatically that the monetary policy framework instituted in 2016 is a very transparent framework, and the writing of the letter is also very much an essential and fundamental element of that transparency. Nobody is hiding anything from the public; but it's a question of time, and I think it should be seen in that context.
