Meet the CEA who did not present this year's Economic Survey

The government on Friday appointed 59-year-old V Ananth Nageswaran as the Chief Economic Adviser, a post which was lying vacant for the last over one month after incumbent Krishnamurthy Subramanian quit and returned to academia.

Subramanian announced his decision on October 8 last year, just before the budgetary exercise for FY23 was to begin. And he demitted the office on December 17, 2021.

After about four months of hunting, the government last Friday announced the name of 59-year-old V Ananth Nageswaran for the top post. 
 

An IIM graduate and former member of Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, Nageswaran has hit the ground running.

Although he wasn’t part of the budget making exercise and didn’t author the Economic Survey, he was seen answering questions during the customary post-Economic Survey media briefing on Monday.

In his first public appearance as the CEA, Nageswaran said the growth projections in the Economic Survey were conservative and the assumption that crude oil prices will average at $70-$75 a barrel through the year is realistic.

Nageswaran is a man of many facets. He is a writer, author, professor, macroeconomist and a consultant. 

After completing his schooling and undergraduate degree in Tamil Nadu’s Madurai, he earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the country’s top-ranked business school IIM Ahmedabad in 1985.

For the next five years, he worked as a Deputy Manager at Chennai Petroleum Corporation. 

In 1995, he obtained a PhD in Finance from the University of Massachusetts, where his dissertation was on 'Empirical Behaviour of Exchange Rates'. 

His post-doctoral corporate career spanned seventeen years from 1994 to 2011 across Switzerland and Singapore. During this period, he has been a Currency Economist at UBS and head of Research and Investment Consulting in Credit Suisse Private Banking in Asia, and Head of Asia Research and Global Chief Investment Officer at Julius Baer.

Nageswaran took to consulting, writing and teaching from July 2011. He has taught at several business schools and institutes of management in India and in Singapore. Currently, he is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Krea University’s IFMR Graduate School of Business, where he was also a Dean for a short while. 

In October 2019, he was appointed as a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister for a period of two years.

He has co-authored four books - The Rise of Finance – Causes, Consequences and Cures, Derivatives, Can India Grow?, The Economics of Derivatives. He serves as Independent Director on the boards of Sundaram Fasteners, TVS Tyres and Delphi-TVS. He helped co-found the Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy

Nageswaran has been writing columns commenting on economic developments for 15 years. In his articles, he had criticised demonetisation but later also spoke on the effects it had in aiding formalisation.

Last year, he advocated for a one-time additional tax on corporates and before the farm laws were repealed he wrote that policymakers should have wider consultations 

Economist Rathin Roy, the managing director of Overseas Development Institute and a former member of the Economic Advisory Council to the PM described Nageswaran as an accomplished policy professional who will bring much needed expertise back to the finance ministry.

Nageswaran has taken charge at a time when household consumption continues to be stressed and job creation remains a concern. His expertise across a range of matters will help him in advising the finance minister on these challenges. And we can see the results from his primary responsibility of drafting the Economic Survey next year.