Arvind Subramanian
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Through India, Economy of India and Master's degree
A former economist at the International Monetary Fund, Subramanian is a widely cited expert on the economics of India, China, and the changing balance of global economic power. He is the author of two books, India's Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation (2008), Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance (2011), and co-author of Who Needs to Open the Capital Account? (2012).
In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named Subramanian one of the world's top 100 global thinkers.
Education
Subramanian attended the D.A.V. Boys Senior Secondary School in Chennai, for his high school education. He proceeded to St Stephen's College, Delhi for his graduation, where he obtained B.A (Hons.) Economics. He subsequently earned an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and M.Phil & D.Phil degrees from the University of Oxford on an Inlaks Scholarship.
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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 taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government from 1999 to 2000 and Johns Hopkins' Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies from 2008 to 2010.
Chief Economic Advisor (2014–2018)
In October 2014, he was appointed the Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) 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.
2018–present
From 2018 to 2020, Subramanian served as a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School. He was a subsequently Professor of Economics at Ashoka University, but resigned from his post citing the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
In 2021, Subramanian joined the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University as a Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs.
In 2024, Subramanian criticised the Indian government's claims of economic growth, saying "I can't understand the latest GDP numbers, they are mystifying, and don't add up."
Controversies
In March 2013, Subramanian, then a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute and CGD, appeared before United States House Committee on Ways and Means hearing on "US-India trade relations: Opportunities and Challenges." During his testimony, Arvind Subramanian stated that "by discriminating against Indian companies and exporters, (US initiatives) will exert natural pressure on India to open up".
Personal life
Arvind Subramanian is married to Parul Subramanian and together they have three children. 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 (CBEC) 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 FC.