Chief economic adviser (
CEA)
Arvind Subramanian will return to the United States owing to family commitments, Union minister Arun Jaitley has announced in a Facebook post.
Subramanian’s three-year term expired last October. He was keen to return to the US last year itself but was persuaded to stay on till May 2019. But “compelling” personal reasons have now made him opt for an early departure. “My departure from this job is for entirely personal reasons. It is no secret that we are expecting our first grandchild in early September. That’s a very compelling reason that takes us back to the old life... of researching, writing, teaching and reflecting, above all,” Subramanian said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Subramanian came out with new ideas: Jaitley
He follows former Niti Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya and former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, who returned to academia in the US.
“Few days ago, Subramanian met me over video conferencing. He informed me that he would like to go back to the US on account of pressing family commitments. His reasons were personal but extremely important for him. He left me with no option but to agree with him,” Arun Jaitley, who is recovering from a kidney transplant surgery at home, wrote in his post.
The minister said that on the expiry of the three-year term, he had requested Subramanian to continue for some more time. “Even at that stage he told me that he was torn between family commitment and his current job, which he considered the best and most fulfilling he has ever done,” Jaitley said.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday hit out at the central government, claiming that the brightest were fleeing the “sinking ship” as the “invisible hand” of the RSS was steering it into rocks. In a veiled dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the party president alleged that he was “fast asleep” and described the situation as crazy. He hit out at the government after Jaitley announced that CEA Subramanian was leaving the finance ministry.
Paying glowing tributes to his contribution to economic policy-making, Jaitley said his early diagnosis of the twin balance-sheet problem had led the government to adopt the macro-economic strategy of higher public investment in the 2015-16 budget. The minister said Subramanian had conceptualised JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhar, mobile) as a data base for availing public benefits. Jaitley said the CEA had contributed to the debate of federalism by conceptualising that the Indian federalism has not merely to be cooperative but also competitive.
“He came out with newer ideas, policy reforms in the sectors of clothing, fertilizers, kerosene, power and pulses. His report on the revenue neutral rate was of great use in forging a consensus which led to the constitution amendment enabling the GST,” the minister said.
“He participated in every meeting of GST, gave his independent views and was heard in rapt attention by almost every finance minister,” he said.
The economist, who specialised on trade issues, was an outspoken critic of the Reserve Bank of India’s failure to assess the inflation situation last year and had publicly suggested that interest rates should be lowered, further increasing the tension between the government and the central bank. The government had to intervene and asked him to restrain himself.
In October, 2014, Subramanian was handed over the keys to the chief economic adviser’s office in North Block, which is the command centre for Asia’s third largest economy, a post which was lying vacant for 13 months after Raghuram Rajan took over as governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
The soft-spoken economist has sterling credentials. Foreign Policy named him one of the world’s top 100 global thinkers in 2011.
