New NITI Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar hints at more exits after Panagariya

According to a column by Kumar, foreign influence on Indian policy making is fading under Modi

Under Narendra Modi, foreign influence on Indian policy making is fading away, writes Rajiv Kumar, who has been selected to replace Arvind Panagariya as the new vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog. In a column published by Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, while referring to Panagariya's exit earlier this month and Raghuram Rajan's decision last year to return to academia after completing his three-year stint as the RBI governor, Kumar writes that if "rumours in Lutyens’ Delhi" are to be believed, more such resignations may occur. 

According to Kumar's column, as the "Anglo-American" influence fades, India may see the appointment of homegrown experts who understand its ground realities better than their foreign counterparts and who will be willing to stay and work until the end of their terms. 

Kumar, who holds a DPhil in Economics from the Oxford University and a Ph.D. from the Lucknow University, also argues in his column that it has taken a long time for the Indian policy establishment to shed what he describes as its "Macaulayist mentality".

Kumar writes that in the past, experts emerging from domestic academic institutions have been turned down for high-ranking government positions in favour of their foreign counterparts. As a result, Kumar argues, Indian policies have been influenced by organisations like the IMF, the World Bank, and the foreign universities that these imported experts revere. 

As reported earlier, Kumar, a homegrown economist who likes to keep a low profile, is currently a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) and has also served as the director of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). CPR and ICRIER are two of the biggest think-tanks in the country. 

Kumar has also had stints working in the central government. He worked in the Ministry of Industries from 1989 to 1991 and then served as an economic advisor in the Ministry of Finance's Department of Economic Affairs from 1992 to 1995.

Kumar was selected as the new vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog after Panagariya announced on August 1 that he had resigned from the same post and that he would get back to the US to resume teaching in the same university from where he came. Panagariya joined the Aayog in early 2015, making the duration of his stay with the Modi government well short of three years.

Why did Panagariya decide to cut short his tenure? As AK Bhattacharya reveals while writing for Business Standard: "Panagariya was reported to have got a tenure that was coterminous with that of the prime minister, but he too decided to cut it short, apparently because he did not want to give up a permanent tenure as a professor, which he would have lost if he had continued in the Aayog beyond August 2017 as his university had declined to extend his leave any further." 

Further, as reported earlier, in his last months in office, Panagariya was hounded by Sangh Parivar outfits such as the Swadeshi Jagran Manch and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS). 

According to the report, BMS General Secretary Virjesh Upadhyay said the NITI Aayog, under Panagariya, was encroaching on the jurisdictions of several ministers. "We had urged the Aayog to consult stakeholders before making any policy. It used to meet corporate lobbies but not labour unions". The Swadeshi Jagran Manch had shot off a letter to the prime minister in May complaining the NITI Aayog catered to the interests of the corporates. At a June meeting in Kanpur, the BMS accused the Aayog of working against the interests of workers.