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.