Midway through her 220-page book A Fly on the RBI Wall, Alpana Killawala, former head of Communication at RBI, recounts how a policy on communication was crafted during the tenure of the legendary Dr YV Reddy as Governor. Alpana, who started as a professional journalist and joined RBI at the behest of the late S Venkitaramanan, the 18th Governor, describes this document more as a “dissemination” policy rather than true “communication.”

The book offers a breezy yet insightful read, delving into the communication (read dissemination) styles of six Governors, all men of significant scholarship and intellectual prowess, from 1992 to 2019. For those interested in financial regulation and policy, how these leaders formulated policy and communicated with the media and public will be particularly engaging.

The author revisits pivotal events such as the securities scam, the rupee’s two-step devaluation, the South-East Asian currency crisis, the Ketan Parekh episode, the 2008 financial turmoil, the taper tantrums, the Asset Quality Review, and demonetisation. Through an insider’s perspective, it provides a detailed narrative of the Governors’ responses to these crises.

What is engaging is the sidelight that she provides. Most of us know the way the RBI Governors dealt with these crises. Mostly, the gentlemen got it right. We can cavil at certain decisions with the benefit of hindsight. But their copybook is largely unblotted. What went on behind the scenes even as these decisions were taken is the stuff of the book.

Adding colour

With a blend of flourish and sensitivity, Alpana adds colour to RBI Governors, otherwise perceived as pedantic and ivory-towerish. For instance, she recounts how Dr Rangarajan, a distinguished monetary economist, was forced to speak in Hindi (a language he barely managed) by the Chairman of a parliamentary committee, despite two Hindi-fluent Deputy Governors offering to substitute. This incident, although resolved, was a poignant moment illustrating language chauvinism. Such tendencies persist with equal vehemence even now.

Another time, a celebrity author sensationalised Raghuram Rajan’s image as “James Bond”, punning on “bond” and suggesting that the “guy has put sex back into the “limp sensex”. It was embarrassing. The communications team at RBI then asked the Governor whether he was okay with such type of coverage. He emphatically said he was not. “I have a wife and a young daughter,” he said. Alpana and her team then saw to it that the Governor’s bespectacled visage became the norm for his newspaper pictures, in a bid to mitigate his “appeal”.

Alpana, with her front-row seat and active role in shaping RBI’s communication, weaves a captivating tale that avoids becoming dull despite the arcane subject matter. She also highlights the personal initiatives launched by the Governors.

For example, Governor Duvvuri Subbarao was dedicated to demystifying the RBI, initiating outreach programmes where top executives travelled to villages for first-hand feedback. One recalls that the RBI website used to put out the weekly programmes of outreach and forthcoming speaking engagements with the tagline, “The weekly schedule of the top executives of the Reserve Bank of India is aimed at demystifying the offices of the Governor and the Deputy Governors.”

Subbarao introduced other innovations like “village immersion,” incognito visits to bank branches by senior executives, and “outbound” programmes to enhance staff interaction. These initiatives, if sustained, could have fostered genuine two-way communication for the RBI, beyond mere media relations.

Media relations

Today, the central bank practises substantially what Alpana describes as a “dissemination” policy, focusing on media and analyst meetings. What was press relations has now turned into media relations. Media meets remain dominated by dense policy discussions on “stance on liquidity”, cues on reading between the lines of the Governor’s statement and so on, the daily bread of the English business media.

There is still no platform for direct engagement with ordinary citizens affected by MPC and RBI decisions. Ordinary people do not know that there is a committee in Mumbai which “believes” that its bi-monthly meetings and resultant decisions control the prices of the pulses, vegetables, rice, wheat, edible oil, milk, sugar, fish, chicken and eggs that they consume daily using promissory notes signed by the Governor. And that the buck for price rise stops with this committee, as legislated by Parliament, elected by them. Unless there is communication with the person at the last mile on these livelihood issues, we will have only “dissemination”.

A Fly on the Wall is a valuable addition to the literature on central banking. It will be judged by posterity not just as a collection of anecdotes but as a discerning record of how “communication” policies are taking shape within the central bank. This effort is a work in progress as the author also acknowledges.

The reviewer is a commentator on banking and finance

Title: A Fly on the RBI Wall: An Insider’s View of the Central Bank

Author:  Alpana Killawala

Publisher: Rupa Publications India

Price: ₹462

https://www.amazon.in/Fly-RBI-Wall-Insiders-Central/dp/9357028862/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=