The book is about the times in which we live. The context is the current global economic and financial crisis caused by human interventions that were bereft of transparency and commitment to sound market discipline. Governments and central banks are groping for quick solutions to assuage the growing anger of societies over the rising economic inequalities unemployment and inflation.
The need of the hour is to set in place good monetary governance. Monetary governance consists essentially of institutional mechanisms and processes required for sound functioning of the tasks that devolve on Governments and central banks. It focuses on issues relating to the functional area of macroeconomic management. It is distinct from financial governance which deals mainly with portfolio management and asset distribution within the context of the principles and policies laid down by macroeconomic managers. The book deals with the institutional requirements, the rainbow of interests the analytics and the international dimensions of monetary governance in detail from the point of view of emerging market economies. Vasudevan argues the way forward from the present state of policy-disarray lies in bestowing focus on accountability knowledge-centric information and structural reforms as the points of policy pursuit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR A. Vasudevan
Dr. A. Vasudevan, currently Honorary Advisor in the Reserve Bank of India, was Executive Director of the Reserve Bank between May 1996 and end-August 2000. As the Executive Director, he was in-charge of research, statistics, monetary policy and information technology departments. He has had vast international experience — Advisor to Executive Director for India at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) between 1984 and 1989; Member of the Indian Delegations to semi-annual IMF/ World Bank and G-24 meetings between 1984 and 1989 and again between 1993 and 2000; represented India at the UNDP Conference on financing of sustainable development at Santiago, Chile; Central Bank Deputy at the Group of Two Deputies’ meetings; and Member of the Task Force on Implementation of Standards and the Follow-up Group on the Implementation of Standards, appointed by the Financial Stability Forum. Among the several Committees on which he served, the important ones were: Expert Group on Saving and Capital Formation in India, Government of India, 1996 (Member), the Working Group on Money Supply, Reserve Bank, 1998 (Vice-Chairman), and the Committee on Technology Upgradation in Banking Sector, Reserve Bank of India, 1999 (Chairman). Apart from the present volume (edited by him), Dr. Vasudevan has recently authored Central Banking for Emerging Market Economies (Academic Foundation, 2003). Described as a “path-breaking work†of “encyclopaedic proportionsâ€, within a short time-span this publication received extraordinary praise in several reviews across leading newspapers and journals. Having authored/edited a few other books earlier, Dr. Vasudevan has numerous scholarly writings of his own in various professional journals, both Indian and foreign. He also taught M.A. students at the University of Bombay (1966-69) on the theories of money and economic development and central banking. Currently Dr. Vasudevan is engaged in writing the history of Reserve Bank of India — a task he has been entrusted with by a committee of the central bank, chaired by Dr. C. Rangarajan.
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