View: The curious case of RBI's missing functions Synopsis What is strange is the missing line in the last two RBI reports: ‘Acting as the lender of last resort’ --- a classical and inseparable function of any central bank; institutionalized since the Great Depression, it gives a monetary authority the power to throw a lifeline to a bank or financial institution to avert a domino effect and full-blown crisis. No one seems to know how or why a change crept into the annual report of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). A line was dropped, and an old one was tweaked in the list of RBI’s ‘main functions’ which appear in an innocuous paragraph that had remained unchanged for years.