One city’s loss is another’s gain. Two of the brightest Indian economists are now home. If Manmohan Singh called Raghuram Rajan and caused people to go into raptures, Narendra Modi has scored the equaliser with Arvind Subramanian as his chief economic adviser.
The “beautiful” picture is complete. The Rajan-Subramanian duo is formidable in every department – mind and matter. The brain gain is significant for a government with a thin intellectual bench. Now the pair has to deliver achche din and Subramanian may find that making policy for a country like India is vastly more difficult than giving logical policy recommendations.
By now you have read about Subramanian’s heavy-duty resume: it stretches from St. Stephen’s to IIM to Oxford and loops around via GATT to some of the most prestigious places of work – the International Monetary Fund, Harvard University and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has written on a variety of topics from trade to intellectual property, from corruption to climate change to China. He reads widely and voraciously – 150 books last year by one account. Literature, biographies, memoirs, books on economics. Thomas Piketty or Jhumpa Lahiri, he has probably out read the next avid reader. He swims, jogs and is a big Arsenal fan. A protege even described him as a “renaissance” man.
That he is exceptionally bright is not in doubt. He is also an independent thinker who can help move the debate in New Delhi. Over the last two years, the US Congress and the administration regularly sought his views on India’s economic and trade policies when criticism from the American business lobby was intense. He brought a semblance of balance.
Subramanian has been on the Indian government’s short list before but somehow the stars didn’t align. According to one version, he reached the “finishing line” a couple of times but always stepped back for personal reasons. P Chidambaram was even a little irritated at the end but has been gracious in welcoming him.
Another version says Subramanian was keen on the job and lobbied ever since Rajan moved to the Reserve Bank as governor. And why not? To be India’s chief economic adviser is a biggie even for a star burning bright abroad. To be a star at home is the real deal.
The next logical question is whether the star will fit easily in the existing solar system. The government, and especially this one, demands a certain mindset, a certain demeanor, even a Zen attitude. The Modi government is Type A to be sure – controlling its message and its men. Most ministers are said to be out of the loop while empowered bureaucrats run the show and a few columnists read the tea leaves for the masses.
Given Subramanian’s personality, he may have to “adjust.” So far, he has dealt with the world mostly on his terms, doing what he wanted and with complete intellectual abandon. He even managed to “flit in and out” of the confined world of the IMF where strict codes of behaviour exist.
At the Peterson Institute, he had no fixed responsibility except to be himself – write books, publish research papers, testify in front of the US Congress when needed – and keep the organisational flag flying. Simultaneously, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. This is called freedom.
People who know him well say he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He knows that he is intelligent and doesn’t care to hide it. Why should he? In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have to but the government is not a free society. Even the US government isn’t in case anyone has delusions about smart people winning the day just because they had good ideas. Sometimes you have to act dumb to play smart.
From the government’s side, it would be foolish not to fully utilise Subramanian’s talents outside the definitions of his job. He knows the US and China well. His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, published in 2011 argues that by 2020, China will tower over the world as the US did after World War II. Countries must come together and bind China to the multilateral system before it becomes a “hegemon” instead of trying to make separate deals with Beijing.
In short, Modi may find the author’s inputs useful when crafting big policy.
The “beautiful” picture is complete. The Rajan-Subramanian duo is formidable in every department – mind and matter. The brain gain is significant for a government with a thin intellectual bench. Now the pair has to deliver achche din and Subramanian may find that making policy for a country like India is vastly more difficult than giving logical policy recommendations.
By now you have read about Subramanian’s heavy-duty resume: it stretches from St. Stephen’s to IIM to Oxford and loops around via GATT to some of the most prestigious places of work – the International Monetary Fund, Harvard University and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has written on a variety of topics from trade to intellectual property, from corruption to climate change to China. He reads widely and voraciously – 150 books last year by one account. Literature, biographies, memoirs, books on economics. Thomas Piketty or Jhumpa Lahiri, he has probably out read the next avid reader. He swims, jogs and is a big Arsenal fan. A protege even described him as a “renaissance” man.
That he is exceptionally bright is not in doubt. He is also an independent thinker who can help move the debate in New Delhi. Over the last two years, the US Congress and the administration regularly sought his views on India’s economic and trade policies when criticism from the American business lobby was intense. He brought a semblance of balance.
Subramanian has been on the Indian government’s short list before but somehow the stars didn’t align. According to one version, he reached the “finishing line” a couple of times but always stepped back for personal reasons. P Chidambaram was even a little irritated at the end but has been gracious in welcoming him.
Another version says Subramanian was keen on the job and lobbied ever since Rajan moved to the Reserve Bank as governor. And why not? To be India’s chief economic adviser is a biggie even for a star burning bright abroad. To be a star at home is the real deal.
The next logical question is whether the star will fit easily in the existing solar system. The government, and especially this one, demands a certain mindset, a certain demeanor, even a Zen attitude. The Modi government is Type A to be sure – controlling its message and its men. Most ministers are said to be out of the loop while empowered bureaucrats run the show and a few columnists read the tea leaves for the masses.
Given Subramanian’s personality, he may have to “adjust.” So far, he has dealt with the world mostly on his terms, doing what he wanted and with complete intellectual abandon. He even managed to “flit in and out” of the confined world of the IMF where strict codes of behaviour exist.
People who know him well say he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He knows that he is intelligent and doesn’t care to hide it. Why should he? In a perfect world, he wouldn’t have to but the government is not a free society. Even the US government isn’t in case anyone has delusions about smart people winning the day just because they had good ideas. Sometimes you have to act dumb to play smart.
From the government’s side, it would be foolish not to fully utilise Subramanian’s talents outside the definitions of his job. He knows the US and China well. His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance, published in 2011 argues that by 2020, China will tower over the world as the US did after World War II. Countries must come together and bind China to the multilateral system before it becomes a “hegemon” instead of trying to make separate deals with Beijing.
In short, Modi may find the author’s inputs useful when crafting big policy.
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