An Economist At Home And Abroad

Economist, author, government adviser, banker and columnist, Dr Shankar Acharya has led a richly varied professional and personal life spanning continents. An alumnus of Highgate School (London), Oxford and Harvard, Dr Acharya worked at the World Bank for a decade before joining the Ministry of Finance as economic adviser where he crafted finance minister V.P. Singh’s path-breaking long-term fiscal policy, which ushered in the MODVAT. After a brief deputation overseas in 1991-92 he returned as the country’s longest-serving chief economic adviser to ministers Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha. Since 2001, he has undertaken a variety of assignments, which include his twelve-year long chairmanship of Kotak Mahindra Bank, stints as a member of the Twelfth Finance Commission and the National Security Advisory Board and columnist for a leading economic daily. In May 2020, he was one of the first people to predict the deep economic recession in India following the onset of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown.