Dr Patel has been hailed as an intellectual giant but also as one who would shy away from cutting interest rates too fast as he is supposed to be an inflation-hawk who will toe the line adopted by Raghuram Rajan on interest rates. Firstly, the fact that Indian economy, industry and consumer behaviour is suffering from high interest rates is only partially true. Indian monetary policy decision-making has moved from its reliance on an individual to a committee. Dr Patel will be the first governor to oversee a proper monetary policy committee which will decide where interest rates should be. If anything, Dr Patel should not have been Modi government's first choice because he had strong links with UPA and Congress governments of the past.

Source: Economic Times August 21, 2016 09:33 UTC