Emerging markets need to participate in global agenda: Rajan

Emerging markets need to participate in setting agenda at the global level to ensure that their interests are taken into consideration in policy formulations by the West, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan said on Thursday.

"One of the biggest deficiencies of emerging markets, as they become bigger players, is they are not participating in setting up the global agenda.

“They are not participating in changing the system, except as a reaction," Rajan said while interacting with students at the St Xavier's College in Mumbai.

He specifically cited policy changes like the quantitative easing by the US, saying the domestic policies like that have a huge impact on emerging markets in a highly integrated global market.

Rajan, the academic-turned-central banker who is credited with predicting the global financial crisis, said that voicing of views will have positive effects.

"The IMF today is looking to do some of the things that we have been suggesting, that is look at things like QE and see what the spill-over effects of those might be, to see that on net, they are positive to the world or not," he said.

"Clearly, they (such policies) will have positive effects on the country initiating them, but they should also have positive effects on net for everyone else," he said.

Rajan has been candid in his views on the accommodative policies of the West and their adverse impact on a country like India.

He had also come out strongly against multilateral institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, alleging that ‘they are not immune to cognitive capture’.

"The staff at multilateral institutions is excellent, and well capable of independent judgement.

“But political pressure subsequent to the initial assessment operates unevenly.

“Even if multilateral organisations become immune to power politics, they are not immune to cognitive capture," he had said in Washington in April.

Image: RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan