A second helping of Raghu

WHEN Raghuram Rajan was put in charge of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) three years ago he warned that the job of a central banker was not to chase votes or Facebook “likes”. With just weeks until the expiry of his term in September, and with no news on whether he might be kept on, the endorsements have built up anyway. Nearly 60,000 well-wishers have signed an online petition asking Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, to extend his tenure. Various Rajandevoted pages on Facebook have a combined fandom of over 250,000 people. Janet Yellen and Mario Draghi, his all-powerful counterparts in America and Europe respectively, cannot muster 10,000 thumbs-up between them.Such adulation makes many suspicious. Mr Rajan has come under sometimes ugly attack from within Mr Modi’s BJP party. One member of parliament has described him as “mentally not fully Indian” on account of his international career. (Mr Rajan came to global prominence as chief economist of the IMF and is a plausible candidate for the fund’s top job.) The criticism has made a swift reappointment politically tricky. Many guess that a second Rajan term is on the cards: sitting RBI governors are ritually reappointed, to bring their term to five years. But few expect word to come before August, despite some previous governors getting the nod as much as seven months in advance.