CENTRAL BANKERS who leave office often write memoirs. Few are as damning of the financial system they once served as Urjit Patel, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2016-18, and Viral Acharya, its deputy governor in 2017-19, who is now an academic at NYU Stern School of Business. In separate books, they tell stories of rampant government meddling in the banking system. Both stood down before their terms ended. Their books suggest why. Mr Patel does not directly address his departure. But he appears to have reached breaking point when the government of Narendra Modi tried to dilute new bankruptcy rules that it had once championed to tackle the problem of zombie corporations. In a chapter titled "The Empire Strikes Back", he relates how the government lobbied the rbi to extend repayment times for companies with 2trn rupees ($27bn) in aggregate exposure. "Instead of buttressing and future-proofing the gains thus far", he writes, the atmosphere became one of going "easy on the pedal".
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