Worldwide, central banks are under pressure from governments, but the most striking instance is the change of the guard at the top of the Reserve Bank of India, where Urjit Patel has quit in dramatic fashion and been replaced by Shaktikanta Das, a loyal government bureaucrat.
We have seen this movie before in emerging economies from Argentina to Turkey, and it never ends well. A U.S.-educated economist with international stature and global business experience has been replaced by a non-economist, a retired civil servant who dedicated over three decades of his life to the Indian bureaucracy and is now more than likely to do the government's bidding.
