Biography of Dr.Raghuram Govind Rajan

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RAGHURAM RAJAN

Raghuram Govind Rajan (born 3 February 1963) is an Indian economist and an international academician who is Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund.In 2015, during his tenure at the Indian Reserve Bank he also became Vice-Chairman of the Bank for International Settlements.
The 2008 economic crisis, Rajan’s views came to be seen as prescient and he was extensively interviewed for the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job (2010).

Raghuram Rajan was born on 3 February 1963 in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. He is the third of four children of R Govindarajan, an Indian Police Service officer who topped his 1953 batch.
Assigned to the Intelligence Bureau, R Govindarajan was posted to Indonesia in 1966. In 1968 he joined the newly created external intelligence unit of the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) .
In 1970 he was posted to Sri Lanka, where Raghuram Rajan missed school one year because of political turmoil.

In 1974 the family returned to India.Throughout his childhood, Rajan presumed his father to be a diplomat since the family traveled on diplomatic passports.
From 1974 to 1981 Rajan attended Delhi Public School, RK Puram,In 1981 he enrolled at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi for a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

He graduated in 1985 and was awarded the Director’s Gold Medal as the best all-round student. In 1987, he earned a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, graduating with a gold medal for academic performance.
He joined the Tata Administrative Services as a management trainee, but left after a few months to join the doctoral program at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1991, he received a PhD for his thesis titled Essays on Banking under the supervision of Stewart Myers.
In his thesis, Rajan argued that this might not necessarily be the case. The first essay focused on the choice available to firms between arm’s length credit and relationship-based credit.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the London Business School in 2012, and by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2015.

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
ECONOMIC ADVISER TO GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
GOVERNOR OF RBI VIEWS
Rajan advocates giving financial markets a greater role in the economy.
In interviews in September 2017, Rajan said the Government of India had consulted the Reserve Bank of India, during his Governorship, on the issue of demonetization but never asked to take a decision.
He said the RBI was against the move and warned the government of the potential negative effects. Rajan also termed the currency notes ban exercise as, “One cannot in anyway say it has been an economic success”.