LinkedIn Showdown: RBI Economist Accuses SBI Research Team of Plagiarizing Reports, Latter Responds

A rare public spat has erupted between two of India’s most influential financial institutions — the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the State Bank of India (SBI) — after an RBI economist accused SBI’s research team of plagiarism in its flagship Ecowrap reports.

The controversy began when Sarthak Gulati, Assistant General Manager at the RBI, published a post on LinkedIn during the Diwali weekend alleging that the SBI research team had replicated key sections, data, and charts from the central bank’s Monetary Policy Reports (MPR).

“As professionals in economic research, originality and attribution are non-negotiable. It’s worrying to see entire sections of RBI’s reports reflected verbatim in SBI’s Ecowrap publications without acknowledgment,” Gulati wrote. He pointed out that the July 2025 edition of Ecowrap mirrored Chapter 2 of the April 2025 MPR, while the October 2025 issue also showed striking similarities in structure and language with the central bank’s latest report.

Gulati argued that such practices, if true, undermine research integrity and distort the standards of professional ethics. “Readers deserve clarity on where the ideas they read originate,” he said, tagging his post with hashtags like #ResearchIntegrity and #OriginalWorkMatters.

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The Ecowrap series, led by Soumya Kanti Ghosh, SBI’s Chief Economic Advisor and a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, responded a day later. Dr Tapas Parida, a member of the Ecowrap team, denied the allegations, explaining that their analysis was based on publicly available government data from MOSPI and that due credit was already given to the RBI in their tables.

“This is not plagiarism but responsible use of public data for broader understanding,” Parida wrote, quoting Rumi to emphasize dialogue over confrontation.

Economist Ajit Ranade weighed in on the debate, noting that while borrowing ideas can be flattering, failing to provide proper citations breaches academic ethics. “Proper attribution and referencing are basic norms,” he said.