V Anantha Nageswaran Assumes Charge as New Chief Economic Advisor of India

Dr. V Anantha Nageswaran was officially named Chief Economic Adviser by the Indian government on January 28 after Krishnamurthy Subramanian finished his three-year term in 2021 and announced his intention to return to academics. After his predecessor, Arvind Subramanian, resigned, he had become the CEA in 2018.

The Union Finance Ministry announced it in a tweet on Twitter: “Government appoints Dr V Anantha Nageswaran as the Chief Economic Advisor and today, he has assumed charge.” The statement came just days before the presentation of the Union Budget for 2022 on February 1 and the filing of the Economic Survey for 2021-22 on January 31.

A high-ranking source confirmed “It is still not decided if Nageswaran will attend the customary post-Economic Survey media briefing, as he was not involved in making it,”. A team led by Principal Economic Advisor Sanjeev Sanyal developed the forthcoming Survey.

Dr. Nageswaran was a part-time visiting member of the Prime Minister of India’s economic advisory council from 2019 to 2021. Nageswaran earned his doctorate from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst after graduating from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.

He was Dean of the IFMR Graduate School of Business and Krea University’s outstanding Visiting Professor of Economics. He’s also worked as a writer, author, teacher, and consultant, among other things. He has authored three books. He has taught at a number of business colleges and management institutes in India and Singapore.

He recently wrote about the importance of reopening educational institutions, arguing that the expense of keeping schools closed outweighs the benefits of Covid safety. In a recent newspaper piece, he stated that while India’s real GDP growth will average 9% in 2021-22 and 2022-23, inflation will remain a problem due to rising global crude oil costs.

He is also a co-founder of a venture capital business and the Takshashila Institution, and has worked with UBS, Credit Suisse, and Julius Baer, among others.

He visits North Block at a time when all eyes are on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget, which will be unveiled on February 1. The focus on recovering growth through large-scale public infrastructure investment and sector-specific initiatives is expected to continue in the Budget.

While there was a substantial recovery in 2021-22, it was not widespread across industries. Meanwhile, household incomes and consumption continue to be strained as a result of rising healthcare costs and inflation. Job creation is still an issue, and several studies claim that millions of people have fallen back into poverty since the pandemic hit India.

Those who have met and worked with him think his most important role will be to deliver concrete ideas to the administration.