Don't think today's situation calls for negative real rates: Jayanth Varma

Either inflation has to come down on its own or we will have to raise the rate, or it will be a combination of the two, says MPC member Varma

Jayanth R Varma, member of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) monetary policy committee (MPC), says a discussion should start on whether to send out quantitative guidance in order to give a greater clarity to the market about central bank actions. In an interview with Manojit Saha, Varma says modest growth sacrifice is inevitable to bring down inflation. Edited excerpts: 

You said the RBI still needs to do a lot of catching up, the MPC minutes showed. Repo rate has been hiked by 90 bps since May. How much more repo rate hike will you see by the end of