For the Reserve Bank of India and its governor, Dr Raghuram Rajan, the national and global challenges of monetary policy are hardly textbook, yet so far the Mumbai monetary authorities are winning high marks from the real estate community and others for deftly playing the economic hands as dealt.

For central bankers, it is unusual times. Rajan and the RBI, rather than facing the “old normal” of major central banks trying to crank down inflation, instead are witnessing such monetary authorities as the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank fighting deflation or “zero bound” — that monetary twilight-zone where interest rates hit zero, and national bankers cannot budge them lower.

Meanwhile, behind a scrim, the People’s Bank of China has been visibly cutting rates and bank reserve requirements and periodically letting the yuan sink, upending financial markets in the process. Only the US Federal Reserve has bucked the trend, raising the federal funds rate