MUMBAI: Soumya Kanti Ghosh, the chief economic advisor at the nation’s largest lender State Bank and also the head of the bank’s research wing, who normally has a different take on most of the macro and monetary economic developments and issues, has been given a different take this time—getting accused of lifting the data and charts straight from the central bank’s reports or to put it pithily plagiarizing for long.
And the unprecedentedly scurrilous spat started playing out in the full social media glare when an economist in the Reserve Bank, Sarthak Gulati, decided to lock horns with the egghead of SBI Research in the middle of the Deepavali celebrations and fireworks and call out the alleged plagiarism.
In a post on the professional networking platform Linkedin, Gulati, an assistant general manager in the monetary policy department of the Reserve Bank, headed by deputy governor Poonam Gupta, has detailed how the SBI Research team led by Ghosh, who is a well-known macro and monetary economist and a member of the PM’s Economic Advisory Council and the 16th Finance Commission, had “verbatim replicated” all the key data including graphs and charts from his department’s work.
The plagiarism allegations are particularly aimed at the two Ecowrap reports published in the name of Ghosh himself in July and October, which allegedly mirrored RBI's monetary policy documents of April and October, respectively.
Gulati, who did not personally call out Ghosh, has alleged that two recent Ecowrap reports verbatim replicated some sections of the monetary policy reports "paragraph-by-paragraph, including key charts and narratives".
Citing specific examples, Gulati said the July 2025 Ecowrap copied parts of the April 2025 monetary policy report, including “boxed items” that are typically reserved for original research. He also claimed that the October 2025 Ecowrap mirrored the language and structure of the October monetary policy report.
Gulati's central complaint is that in none of these reports, Ghosh and his team “replicated their content without proper attributions and citations”, undermining the integrity of original institutional research.
Though Gulati did not name Ghosh personally, he was quoted in a section of the media rejecting the allegations as "sad and laced with sensationalism".
Ghosh did not respond to TNIE's message seeking his comment, though.
"As professionals in the financial and economic research community, we rely on originality, attribution, and integrity in our analysis. That's why it's deeply concerning to see what appears to be verbatim replication of RBI's monetary policy reports in recent SBI Ecowrap reports, without any attribution," Gulati wrote on LinkedIn.
"July 2025 Ecowrap replicates large parts of chapter 2: Price and cost from the RBI's April 2025 monetary policy report--paragraph by paragraph, including key charts and narratives. The October 2025 Ecowrap similarly mirrors language and structure from the October 2025 monetary policy report, again without acknowledgement," Gulati said, citing key examples of the alleged plagiarism.
Stating why such alleged plagiarism should be called out, Gulati said all of this mattered as "it undermines the value of original institutional research. It reflects a broader disregard for research ethics and academic norms. I am sharing this to raise awareness and open a conversation on transparency, attribution, and the standards we must uphold in economic and financial research. Readers deserve clarity on where the ideas they're reading actually come from. Although as researchers and analysts, it's always exciting to see your work, your writing, your ideas, your analysis widen public discourse and help shape the narrative around India's economy."
Responding to Gulati’s allegations, Ghosh’s colleague in the SBI Research, Tapas Parida, a day later on LinkedIn, rejected all allegations, arguing that the Ecowrap used a distinct methodology and equation from the RBI, with a different focus. He also attributed the similarities to the use of common, publicly available government data sources, such as those from Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. He further noted that the October Ecowrap report had indeed acknowledged the RBI as a data source in the tables.
“Regarding the language and structural similarities in the October Ecowrap with the central bank observations available in public domain (Oct monetary policy report using the original ministry data), we have gone on to update the observations with latest data (also taken from similar source viz. ministry) and duly acknowledged the central bank (as the source) in our tables in the same publication, stamping its seal of originality.
“This itself vindicates our unwavering approach to not take undue credit and stick to disclosures as necessary while promoting broader contours of fairness and ethics, forming the bedrock of impeccable research,” Parida said in his LinkedIn post.
Citing the great philosopher Jalal al-Din Muḥammad Rumi, he said, “as Rumi said, 'Raise your words, not voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder.’ This, in a lighter vein, is not a harbinger of plagiarism but a mere reproduction of a great thought for greater good of understanding.
“At SBI Research, we believe good research, invariably a teamwork, should stand out and open a healthy debate and discourse much beyond the closed circles that propel the great nation of ours to prosperity and progress,” he concluded.
He also differentiated the SBI analysis by stating that it focuses on more recent data to understand inflation trends, unlike the RBI's more exhaustive, long-term studies.
The incident calls for clearer standards on research ethics, citation norms, and professional conduct among economists, particularly as both public and private institutions increasingly draw from the same economic data.
Of course, it is a fact that Ghosh and his team cannot match the data heft that the RBI has, but the rare public spat between economists at the two of the most important financial institutions of the nation exposes a fissure in the nation’s policy research ecosystem.
Both the RBI as well as SBI have reportedly cautioned their researchers internally to refrain from social media posts related to the dispute.
