Chennai: Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan, Nobel laureate Esther Duflo, former Chief Economic Adviser to Union government Arvind Subramanian and others will be a part of the Tamil Nadu government’s economic advisory council, Governor Bhanwarilal Purohit announced in his address to the assembly.
Development economist Jean Dreze and former Union Finance Secretary S Narayan will also be part of the newly-constituted council.
“Based on the recommendations of this council, the government will revitalise the state’s economy and ensure that the benefits of economic growth reach all segments of society,” Purohit said in his address.
Bhanwarilal also gave the policy outline of the newly-elected DMK government. “This government is determined to transform Tamil Nadu into a State with a society with self-respect, with an empowered citizenry enjoying their rights and which is prosperous in all respects, as envisioned by Thanthai Periyar (father of Dravidian movement),” he added.
About the members
Duflo is a French–American economist who is a professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is the co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, which was established in 2003, along with her husband and Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee.
Former RBI chief Rajan is currently the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prior to working as RBI Governor, Raghuram Rajan was the Chief Economic Adviser to the Union government in 2012.
Arvind Subramanian, on the other hand, is a visiting lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Jean Dreze is a professor at the Delhi School of Economics and the Department of Economics at Ranchi University. An IAS officer of the 1965 batch, S Narayan was formerly the Union Finance Secretary and was Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister in 2003-04.