Arvind Subramanian


Arvind Subramanian is an Indian economist and the former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, having taken charge of the position on 16 October 2014 to 20 June 2018 succeeding Raghuram Rajan. The post of CEA was lying vacant for over a year since Raghuram Rajan left the finance ministry to join the RBI as governor in September 2013. He then took to the Office of Chief Economic Adviser to The Government of India on 16 October 2014. He was in office till 20 June 2018. He was succeeded by Krishnamurthy Subramanian.
He served as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, both located in Washington DC. Formerly an economist at the International Monetary Fund, he is a widely cited expert on the economics of India, China, and the changing balance of global economic power. Arvind Subramanian is the author of two books, ' published in 2008, ' published in September 2011, and co-author of Who Needs to Open the Capital Account? which was published in 2012.
In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the world's top 100 global thinkers.

Education

Subramanian attended the DAV Boy's Senior Secondary School Chennai, for his high school education. He proceeded to St Stephen's College, Delhi for his graduation, where he obtained B.A Economics. He then proceeded to earn an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and M.Phil & D.Phil degrees from the University of Oxford on an Inlaks Scholarship.

Career

Subramanian was the Assistant Director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He is a development economist who worked closely with former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan when both were at the International Monetary Fund. He served at the GATT during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. He has taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government from 1999 to 2000. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins' Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies from 2008 to 2010.

Chief Economic Adviser

In October 2014, he was appointed the Chief Economic Adviser to Indian government. The post had been lying vacant since Raghuram Rajan left the finance ministry to join as governor of the Reserve Bank of India in September 2013. After his three-year term ended in 2017, he was given a year's extension.
On 20 June 2018, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced that owing to family commitments, Subramanian would be stepping down before the scheduled end of his tenure to return to academia in the US. Jaitley noted that Subramanian's early diagnosis of the twin balance-sheet led to the government outlining higher public investment in the union budget of 2015–16. He also credited Subramanian with conceptualizing the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity, or JAM, as a data base of citizens for availing public benefits.
In his role as the CEA, Subramanian was responsible for bringing out the annual Economic Survey of India, traditionally released prior to the presentation of the union budget in the Indian parliament. He is widely credited with revamping the presentation of information through the surveys, making them wider in scope and accessible to a larger audience. He is currently working as an economics professor at Ashoka University.

Publications

Subramanian has authored essays and other publications on growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, and the World Trade Organization. He has been widely published in academic and other journals
He has also been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including the Economist, Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and New York Review of Books. He contributes frequently to the Financial Times and is a columnist in India's leading financial daily, Business Standard.

Controversies

As a Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for Global Development, in March 2013, Arvind Subramanian appeared before United States House Committee on Ways and Means hearing on "US-India trade relations." During his testimony, Arvind Subramanian said "by discriminating against Indian companies and exporters, will exert natural pressure on India to open up".

Personal life

He is married to Parul Subramanian. Together they have 3 children: Karti, Tia and Rohan. His elder brother is V S Krishnan who is a retired Indian Revenue Service Officer and a former Member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs and was a key player in piloting the Goods and Service Tax Bill.
He is fond of both Indian and Western classical music, and owns a large collection of music Cassettes. He is interested in Tennis and Arsenal.