It’s all drama. On Monday Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a swipe at the mercurial MP Subramanian Swamy saying that the attack on the RBI chairman and officers of the finance ministry were ‘inappropriate’. He said, “if anyone considers himself above the system then he is wrong.” Referring to Raghuram Rajan, Modi said his patriotism is no less and he would continue to serve India irrespective of whether he is in some position or not. The question is, why did Modi wait so long to put Swamy in place? As long as Swamy was attacking Rajan it was okay with the establishment. The attack pushed Rajan to a point where he officially announced that he would not seek a second term. He openly expressed hurt that the government had not backed him.
Modi’s outburst was aimed at protecting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and officials of the finance ministry who had for some unknown reason shown up on Swamy’s radar. Modi’s defence of the RBI chairman has come too late. If he really believed that Rajan needed to be backed, he should have made it public on the day Swamy fired his first salvo, not after Rajan announced his decision to quit. This is a case of conveniently using Swamy when suitable and asking him to shut up when uncomfortable.
