The Hindu Business Line : Memory bank

Nothing duller, you’d think, could be found than the RBI. Monetary policy, after all, is not something that sets the normal person’s juices running. But a visit to the archives quickly dispels that notion, despite its architectural design which is pure Public Works Department (PWD), circa 2000.

But the shock is buffered by a truly gorgeous Peepul tree outside the main door. It bears a plaque that says a freedom fighter who had shot an oppressive British Collector in the 1850s took refuge under it. That sets the tone for the place because it is a veritable treasure-trove of documents dating back to more than 150 years.

These documents range from the promissory note that Rabindranath Tagore’s father signed to borrow some money from the East India Company to the rejection — by an RBI clerk, if you will — of Indira Gandhi’s 1961 application for foreign exchange for Rajiv Gandhi so that he could study at Cambridge.

“No action appears necessary”, that worthy noted on the letter, to which someone else added “File”. Her reply must have been so explicitly colourful that I think the RBI shredded it post-haste, for no record of it is to be found.

There are some even funnier documents. For instance, it turns out that when it was set up in 1935, only officers were allowed to sit on chairs and the clerks had to sit on stools. In 1939, after suffering four years of posterior torture, they demanded chairs.

Indira Gandhi’s application for foreign exchange for son Rajiv’s Cambridge education.

With the famed slowness that still annoys the finance ministry, the RBI took a year to decide what was to be done. To give the clerks chairs was unthinkable. But to not give it to them was also not an option. So the top management did what the RBI is so good at — it took an incremental approach. The clerks were given stools but with backs.

But the acknowledgement of this magnanimity was required to be published in the union’s bulletin. This is what it wrote:

“It is nearly after a year or so, that the stools provided for the staff working at the counter have been replaced by chairs. The stools were very uncomfortable and the employees are very grateful to the Authorities for the convenience now provided…

“…In view of the fact that the bank might find it rather difficult to make the necessary alteration after the stools were provided, a further representation was made to the Deputy Governor for his sympathetic consideration of the point in question. But instead of examining the question in proper light, the Association was informed by the Secretary of the Bank that the Governor and the Deputy Governor considered that the stools would prove more comfortable and convenient…It is a matter of great satisfaction that the Bank has now come to realise the hardships that the staff was subject to… and has accordingly converted the stools into chairs by fixing backs to the stools…The Association cannot, however, help remarking that had the question been sympathetically considered before… then the Bank would have saved the expenses now incurred…”

Deputy Governors, it seems, can’t be reformed.

Faced with this writing style, it is little wonder that no less a person than Jawaharlal Nehru implicitly chided the RBI’s tendency to be prolix. He wrote to the Governor of the RBI, Sir C.D. Deshmukh, in 1948 that he was “greatly worried” at the progressive deterioration of the economic situation and that he would be grateful if Deshmukh could send a note… “relatively brief” giving analysis and remedies. One wonders how Deshmukh coped with that one.

But the one I found the most hilarious was the Item (No 1, what else?) on the agenda of a 1982 Board meeting. It says on top:

“Fixation of Pay Allowance and other terms and conditions of appointment of Dr Manmohan Singh, Governor, Reserve Bank of India.”

Draft Resolution: Resolved that subject to the approval of the central government the salary, allowances… of Dr Manmohan Singh… be fixed as under:

2. Salary: Rs 4,500 per mensem subject to income tax;

5. DA: Rs 900 per mensem plus ad hoc DA of Rs 600 per mensem;

6. Local allowance: Rs 75 per mensem;

7. Rent free furnished house;

But what really took the cake was Item No. 8 about the car:

“He will be entitled to the free use of Bank’s car for official purposes. If the car is used for private purposes also, a sum of Rs 150 per mensem in case the car so used is of more than 16 horse power and Rs 100 per mensem, if it is of 16 horse power and below shall be payable to the Bank. Non-duty journeys for private purposes shall not exceed 500 km in a month, journeys from residence to office being treated as on duty. Charges for the private use of the Bank’s car in excess of the 500 km limit will be recoverable at such rates as may be fixed by the Bank from time to time.”

Now we know why Raghuram Rajan (Former Chief Economist, IMF, now honorary advisor to the Prime Minister) is needed. If they go on like this for a car, that too for the Governor, imagine what a foreign bank has to go through for a licence.

Of late, the RBI archives have added around 60 tapes of oral history of the period 1982-97. These, however, are not yet open to the public.

Given the depth and extent of what is available at these archives, it is natural to expect a lot of scholars burrowing through the documents. Monetary economists, in particular, should vacation there.

But no such luck, for, we Indians are like that only. We don’t care about history.

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