Governor of the Reserve Bank of India since December 2024. He has cut interest rates by 1.25 percentage points over his first year. He has been readier than his predecessor to let the rupee depreciate, and has told the Financial Times that rates are likely to stay low for a "long period". Under his stewardship the RBI has built up its stock of foreign-exchange reserves.
Mr Malhotra has suggested that modest depreciation of the rupee against the dollar is "normal"—an arithmetic consequence of India's inflation being higher than America's. During the 2026 Iran war the RBI's foreign-exchange reserves dwindled by $25bn to around $700bn. Mr Malhotra clamped down on speculation, limiting banks' daily bets against the rupee to $100m for the first time in 15 years. On April 20th 2026 the RBI reversed course, perhaps concluding that making it harder to hedge currency risk is not the best way to keep investors in India.
The human race never solves any of its problems. It merely outlives them.