RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das, who was chosen for the prestigious Governor of the Year Award 2023 earlier this year, has said that central banks at the core of monetary and financial systems have been called to do “heavy lifting” well beyond their traditional mandate.
Das was conferred the award by ‘Central Banking’ which definitively covers and analyses issues around the world’s central banks and financial regulators following the summer meetings of the organisation in London on Tuesday.
When the award was announced in March, the organisers said that the Reserve Bank of India Governor is being honoured because he has cemented critical reforms, overseen world-leading payments innovation and steered India through difficult times with a steady hand and well-crafted turn of phrase.
“COVID had a devastating impact worldwide, and densely populated India looked particularly vulnerable. It was in managing this crisis that Das had perhaps his greatest impact, appearing as a voice of calm amid the fear, and steering the RBI deftly between intense political pressures on one side and economic disaster on the other,” ‘Central Banking’ said in a statement.
“COVID-19 was no doubt the biggest crisis Das has faced so far as RBI chief. But his tenure, which began in December 2018, has been marked by a series of grave challenges, starting with the collapse of a major non-bank firm, moving through the first and second waves of the coronavirus, and then, in 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its inflationary impact,” it said.