New Delhi, July 13 -- In Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (2003), Raghuram G. Rajan warned how cronyism could wreck competition and hurt prosperity. In Fault Lines (2010), he traced the risk binge that gave America its subprime loan crisis to easy credit used as a sort of balm for inequality, among better-known factors.

Lured home in 2012 from US academia to serve as chief economic advisor, Rajan became governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 2013 and served a three-year term.

Last week, as finance professor at University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Rajan was named by the US Federal Reserve as one of three co-leaders of a task-force that will review its balance sheet policy.

Along with Karen Dynan and Jeremy Stein, econ...