Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has called the “anti-national” tag given to Infosys by RSS-linked magazine Panchajanya ‘unproductive,’ and asked if a similar tag would be given to the Union government for the uneven implementation of the COVID-19 vaccination drive in India or the not-so-smooth rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The former RBI Governor was in conversation with NDTV’s Sreenivasan Jain and was asked about Panchjanya’s cover article accusing IT giant Infosys of “acting at the behest of anti-national forces” after glitches were reported on the new Income Tax portal.
“It strikes me as completely unproductive. Would you accuse the government of being anti-national for not doing a good job on vaccines initially? You would say it is a mistake. And people do make mistakes. I do not think the GST rollout has been spectacular, I think it could have been done better. When people make mistakes, (one should) certainly enquire why the mistake was made. We need an inquiry into the vaccine rollout, we need an inquiry into why the GST was not rolled out properly. But learn from those mistakes and don't use it as a club to roll out your own prejudices which exist,” Raghuram Rajan said. Watch his response here:
This comes days after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also said that calling Infosys ‘anti-national’ was “not right at all.” She had told News18 that the Union government and Infosys are working together to fix those glitches.
The Panchjanya article, which had slammed Infosys and also cast aspersions on the potential influence of China and ISI over the glitches, had triggered much outrage, leading to RSS trying to distance itself from the article. RSS's Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh, Sunil Ambekar, said that the article published by Panchjanya reflected the individual opinion of the author. However, days later, a senior RSS functionary heaped praises on the magazine. RSS Joint General Secretary, Manmohan Vaidya, called the magazine a herald for Dharma Yudh (virtuous battle).