India Must Heed Sri Lanka's Lesson On Minorities, Says Raghuram Rajan

Tracing the economic troubles of neighbouring Sri Lanka, Raghuram Rajan said part of the island nation's problems lie in the troubled history of minorities and their place in what once was "quite a successful middle-income economy".

Raghuram Rajan, the former chief of the Reserve Bank of India, today said India is less of a liberal democracy now than it was 10 years ago. Tracing the economic troubles of neighbouring Sri Lanka in an exclusive interview with NDTV, Mr Rajan said part of the island nation's problems lie in the troubled history of minorities and their place in what once was "quite a successful middle-income economy".  

"Sri Lanka certainly had a large minority – the Tamils. And when they had a problem of jobless growth, politicians found it particularly easy to deflect some of the attention to the problem of minorities and made a bogeyman out of the minorities... essentially creating the strife that resulted in civil war," he said.

"I would say that to my mind is the lesson from Sri Lanka. Let us work for communal harmony and unity of the country. That will be strong for the economy and integrity of the country," he said.

Talking of the parallel in India, he said While India is "some distance away from that, it is something we should start worrying about given the kind of fuel that is being fed to this fire by some politicians".