last resort in the hierarchy of contingency planning i would say spend on capital expenditure and spend on mnrega if because of the pandemic in rural areas there is no demand for mnrega then resort to enlarged free foodgrain supply and direct cash transfers if you then run short of money because of revenue shortfall resort to additional borrowingdirect monetisation should be absolutely the last resort in any country particularly in an emerging one like india with weak institutional structures it will dent our policy credibility which will have costly longterm implications for sure there may come a time when direct debt monetisation by the rbi might become inevitable but we are nowhere close to such a contingencythe writer was governor of the rbi as told to mayur shetty