RBI Monetary Policy Committee: What We Know About The New External Members

The government on Tuesday appointed three new external members, including Ram Singh, Saugata Bhattacharya, and Nagesh Kumar, to the Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee. The reconstitution of the panel has come ahead of the crucial policy meeting on interest rate decisions, slated between Oct. 7-9.

These new members are replacing Mumbai professor Ashima Goyal, IIM-Ahmedabad professor Jayanth Varma, and New Delhi senior adviser Shashanka Bhide, whose tenure ends on Friday. The other members of the committee include Governor Shaktikanta Das, Deputy Governor Michael Patra, and Executive Director Rajiv Ranjan.

Ram Singh is the director of the prestigious Delhi School of Economics, with a Ph.D. (JNU, New Delhi) and Post-Doctorate (Harvard) degrees in law and economics, as per the research portal Ideas For India. His areas of research interests are contract theory, public economics, and public private partnerships.

He is a recipient of Fulbright, Commonwealth, Erasmus Mundus Fellowship in economics and Ronald Coase Fellowship in economics. His publications can be found on the Economic and Political Weekly. One of his publications— 'The Efficiency of Comparative Causation' (with Francesco Parisi)—is in the Review of Law and Economics, 2011.

Apart from DSE, he has taught at Brown University, University of Hamburg, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and has been Commonwealth Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Saugata Bhattacharya is ex-chief economist at Axis Bank Ltd., with over 30 years of experience in economic and financial markets analysis, policy advocacy, infrastructure and project finance, consumer behaviour and analytics.

He is also a senior fellow at Centre for Policy Research. According to the CPR portal, Bhattacharya plays a lead role in the ongoing work with the Government of Andhra Pradesh—supporting its Data Analytics Unit. He also pursues his research interests in macro-financial forecasting, reviewing global and domestic developments, the MSME sector, digital public infrastructure in banking, financial and insurance sectors, and urbanisation.

Earlier, at IDFC, he worked as a specialist with the Policy Advisory Group and participated in several key committees of Government of India, including the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Infrastructure.

Nagesh Kumar is the director and chief executive of the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development. Prior to taking up this role in May 2021, Kumar served as director at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of Asia and the Pacific, holding several senior management roles during 2009-21, including as chief economist, director of macroeconomic policy and financing for development division and social development division at the UNESCAP headquarters in Bangkok. He was also head of the South and South-West Asia Office located in New Delhi, that he had established.

Kumar is a non-resident senior fellow of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. Holding a PhD in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, Kumar was recipient of the Exim Bank’s first International Trade Research Award in 1990, and GDN’s Research Medal awarded by the World Bank and the Japanese Government in Tokyo in 2000.