Raghuram Govind Rajan is an Indian economist and the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. During his tenure at the RBI, he also became the Vice-Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements.

Early Life

Raghuram Rajan was born on February 3, 1963, into a Tamil Brahmin family in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. He attended Delhi Public School in R. K. Puram for his early education. He enrolled in the electrical engineering bachelor's program at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in 1981. As the best all-around student, he received the Director's Gold Medal upon graduation in 1985. He graduated with a gold medal for academic achievement from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with a Master of Business Administration in 1987. He began working for Tata Administrative Services as a management trainee but left after a short time to enroll in the doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

The London Business School in 2012 and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2015 both conferred honorary doctorates on the former governor. and the Catholic University of Louvain in 2019.

Career

Academic Career

Rajan began working at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago in 1991 as an assistant professor of finance. In 1995, he was hired on a full-time basis. He has served as a guest professor at the Indian School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, Kellogg School of Management, and Stockholm School of Economics.

Rajan has published a lot of articles on organizational structures, corporate finance, growth and development, and banking. He is listed among the top 5% of authors by the Research Papers in Economics project, which ranks him as one of the most significant economists in the world. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009 and served as the president of the American Finance Association in 2011. He is a member of the Group of Thirty international economic body. He has served as a founding member of the academic council of the Indian School of Business since 1998.

Policy Making

International Monetary Fund

As the first deputy managing director of the IMF at the time, American economist Anne Krueger recently read Rajan's book Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists and contacted him. Rajan laid the foundation for the IMF's economic country models to incorporate financial sector analysis. He also oversaw a group that helped some significant economies reduce their balance of payments imbalances. The Research Department, under Rajan's leadership, made significant contributions to a thorough review of the IMF's medium-term strategy, worked to incorporate contemporary modeling and exchange rate assessment techniques into the IMF's consultations with member countries, and examined China and India's development and integration into the global economy.

Economic Advisor to Government of India

In 2007, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who was the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission at the time, asked Rajan to prepare a report outlining the upcoming wave of financial sector reforms in India.

Rajan was appointed as an honorary economic adviser by Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in November 2008, a position that required Rajan to draught policy notes at Singh's request.

Rajan succeeded Kaushik Basu in the position of chief economic adviser to the Indian Ministry of Finance on August 10, 2012.He also created the 2012–2013 Economic Survey of India.

Reserve Bank of India

On 6 August 2013 it was announced that Rajan would take over as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India for a term of 3 years, succeeding Duvvuri Subbarao. On 5 September 2013, he took charge as the 23rd governor, at which point he took a leave of absence from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Rajan pledged banking reforms and loosened restrictions on foreign banking in his first speech as governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As a result, the BSE SENSEX increased by 333 points, or 1.83%. The rupee increased 2.1% against the US dollar after his first day in office. In his role as RBI Governor, Rajan prioritised reducing inflation, bringing it from 9.8% in September 2013 to 3.78% in July 2015, the lowest level since the 1990s. From 6.1% in September 2013 to a historical low of -4.05% in July 2015, wholesale inflation decreased.

Rajan was accused of raising interest rates during his time in office to the detriment of small and medium-sized businesses Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy. Additionally, he asserted that Rajan has been using his unsecured personal email account from the University of Chicago to send sensitive and confidential financial information. But Rajan argued that addressing them would amount to endorsing the claims, which are fundamentally false and without merit.

On June 18, 2016, Rajan made the decision to leave his position as RBI Governor and return to academia. Rajan revealed in September 2017 that the government had not extended him any offers despite his willingness to accept an extension, leaving him with no choice but to return to the University of Chicago.

Personal Life

Raghuram Rajan is an American citizen who was born in India. He met Radhika Puri Rajan while they were both students at IIM Ahmedabad, and they are now married. At the University of Chicago Law School, Radhika teaches.

An American solar company employs Rajan's older brother. Rajan's sister is an Indian Administrative Service officer who teaches French in New Delhi. Mukund Rajan, the younger brother of Rajan, served as Tata Sons' Chief Ethics Officer and Brand Custodian.

Rajan eats only plants. He enjoys playing squash and tennis outside. He enjoys reading Upamanyu Chatterjee, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Tolstoy.

Awards & Achievements

In 2003, Rajan won the inaugural Fischer Black Prize awarded by the American Finance Association for contributions to the theory and practice of finance by an economist under age 40.
In February 2010 NASSCOM named him Global Indian at its 7th annual global leadership awards.
In 2010, he was awarded the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy.
In November 2011 he received the Infosys Prize for Social Sciences – Economics for his work in analyzing the contribution of financial development to economic growth, as well as the potentially harmful effects of dysfunctional incentives that lead to excessive risk-taking.
In 2013, he was awarded the fifth Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics for his "ground-breaking research work which influenced financial and macro-economic policies around the world".
In 2014 he was conferred with the "Governor of the Year Award 2014" from London-based financial journal Central Banking.
In March 2019, he was awarded "Yashwantrao Chavan National Award 2018" for his contribution to economic development.