When the time is auspicious, says the old adage, everything will work for you. This seems to hold good for our great nation too. India and Indians have become a power to reckon with. Indians win elections in countries like the UK and USA to become MPs, Ministers and Mayors. Satya Nadella is now the chief of Microsoft. And it would not really come as a surprise if our Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan becomes the head of IMF, which was formed by 'the sahib' to rule over the world.
The rumoured move comes after K.V. Kamath, who had turned the ICICI Bank into the biggest bank in the private sector, has become the first Chairman of the BRICS Development Bank. The bank is a joint venture of India, China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. The idea of the bank was mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while attending the BRICS meeting at Fortaleza. China forcefully took its headquarters to Shanghai. But they had to approve India's demand that the first Chairman post should go to India. The attempt made by America to thwart the idea of the bank had also failed.
Although the aim of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was to give aid to Asian countries, it is also controlled by the westerners. That is why an alternative was set up. It will be the first Chairman of BRICS Development Bank who will decide on the character of the bank. Kamath will be saying goodbye from the post after six years after letting India enjoy a prominent position. At BRICS he will be succeeded by chairmen from Brazil and Russia respectively.
By that time BRICS will overtake ADBI in its stature. The capital of the bank will be $50 billion ( Rs 3 lakh crore). All the five member states will put $10 billion apiece to accumulate the capital. That will not be a bad start at all. Since all the countries have an equal investment, none will have an upper hand.
Kamath, who hails from Kundapura, Udupi, will be in the saddle at BRICS for a period of six years. After doing Mechanical Engineering at Surathkal NIT, he secured his MBA from IIM. Kamath is 67 and Rajan is 52.
The New York-based World Bank and IMF are controlled by Euro-Americans. It has been Frenchmen who become the Director General of IMF over the last several years. The incumbent Christine Madeleine Odette Lagarde and her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who had to quit after sexual allegations, have been French nationals. The role of IMF is to intervene whenever a country is in financial crisis, revamp its economic sector and offer loans. There will not be any surprise if Raghuram Rajan takes up the post of the Director General. Rajan is the man who had predicted the economic crisis in 2008. He has been Professor of Economics at several universities including Chicago. He was also the Chief Economist at IMF. Isn't that enough?
Kamath has a wealth of experience at the ADB. He was at Manila and China in those days. Kamath, who brought up several leaders in the Indian banking sector will make it big at BRICS too, No doubt.