NEWSMAKER: Shubhashis Gangopadhyay

North Block opens doors to young economist

Finance ministry denizens are typical babus, with the senior ones mostly dour and cautious survivors from the IAS, who make it to the top by dint of hard work and the "right" attitude. There have been some exceptions though, including some charming and eccentric characters.

One was a Revenue Secretary who might have been better placed as Expenditure Secretary, judging by how much he spent on redoing his room at North Block, one of the finest examples of composite Indian and European classical architecture.

Another right arm to the minister lost his job principally because of his less than respectful attitude to his boss (he used to walk into the minister's room without knocking, referring to him by his first name). But for the most part, reverence and stodginess have been the hallmark of the more senior bureaucrats at the ministry, like elsewhere.

Things changed a bit earlier this week, when a Ph.D in economics from Cornell University, who is in his late forties, was appointed adviser to Finance Minister P Chidambaram, a post that bestows on him the enviable status of being one of the youngest secretaries in the finance ministry, and the entire central government.

Being the "youngest" among peers is not something new for Gangopadhyay. Earlier this week, Chidambaram described him as the youngest full-tenure professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, where he taught from 1991 to 2002.

Schooled at Calcutta Boys' School and having studied economics at Presidency College, his batch mates included the likes of Debraj Roy and Kunal Sengupta, both distinguished economists.

In fact, his batch of economics honours graduates has been compared with those who graduated from the same college in 1953, including Amartya Sen and Sukhamoy Chakravarty.

Gangopadhyay used to sport a brand differentiator that appears to have vanished upon his entry into North Block. His latest pictures show him without his trademark earrings. If he's worried that it would be frowned upon, he need not. The finance minister also has pierced ears, as he himself pointed out at a Pongal lunch at his residence earlier this week.

Recognised as a development economist, Gangopadhyay's appointment is seen as a reorientation of priorities, in terms of the policies that the finance minister intends to follow.

With the United Progressive Alliance government having entered the last lap of its five-year tenure, Chidambaram is keen to focus on the pet theme of "socially inclusive" growth.

To cite an instance of what he has in mind for the coming Budget, Chidambaram has promised to focus on projects that will lead to the revival of water bodies across the country.

With Budget 2008-09 due in less than six weeks, a professional economist like Gangopadhyay will prove to be a fitting replacement to Parthasarathi Shome, a renowned tax specialist, who after reforming India's taxation regime, is, now expected to do the same in the United Kingdom.