FE Award for Rangarajan

Rangarajan, who satisfies all three criteria in ample measure, joins an august group of other awardees in the past which included Manmohan Singh, former FM, Raja Chelliah, chairman of thegoverning board of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and economists PR Brahmananda, ML Dantwala, Bhabatosh Datta and KN Raj.

An academician and policy-maker par excellence, Rangarajan graduated from Madras University with BA Hons and then proceeded to the University of Pennsylvania from where he obtained his PhD. He taught for some time at the University8217;s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University.

In India, he has taught students at Loyola College, Madras, at the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Rangarajan8217;s biggest contribution is, however, in the area of policy-making, where he has held various positions, both official and otherwise. As Governor of the RBI from 1992 to 1997, Rangarajan presided over an era of fairly revolutionary changes in the Indian financial system. During his stewardship, interest rates werederegulated, the forex markets freed from most of the earlier restraints, and the banking system was strengthened through the imposition of tighter provisioning norms and the adoption of more transparent practices.

Between 1985 and 1991, he was a member of the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister.