The Reserve Bank of India has reallocated the portfolios of Subir Gokarn, following his term as Deputy Governor ending on December 31. In addition to the existing portfolios, K. C. Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, will now also look after Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation, the Rajbhasha Department and the Right to Information Division.
Deputy Governor Anand Sinha will hold additional charge of the Department of Communication and the Risk Monitoring Department. H. R. Khan, Deputy Governor, will have additional responsibility of the Financial Markets Department.
Three departments — Economic and Policy Research, Statistics and Information Management, and Monetary Policy — will report directly to Governor D. Subbarao till further orders.
Surprise choice
Urjit R Patel may emerge as the surprise choice for new Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. A search panel led by the Governor D. Subbarao is believed to have recommended his name along with Kalpana Kochhar and Subir Gokarn (for extension). Since, Gokarn term ended on Monday and the Government did not give him further extension, it seems now the race is between Patel and Kochhar.
Patel is an expert on economics and public finance in India, international trade, financial intermediation and regulation of infrastructure utilities. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and M. Phil. inEconomics from Oxford University. He completed his B.Sc in Economics from London University. Fluent in Hindi and Gujarati beside English, he is fellow to Graduate School of Yale University and Linacre College, University of Oxford.
Patel has been a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution since 2009. At present, he is advisor (energy & infrastructure) to the Boston Consulting Group. Between 2007 and 2011, he was President (Business Development) at Reliance Industries Ltd., where he, inter alia, worked on strategising commercial approaches for energy companies of climate change-mitigation policies.
Prior to that, he spent a decade working in the Indian financial sector specialising in funding private infrastructure projects. He served on the Expert Committee on Integrated Energy Policy and the Task Force on Direct Taxes, both constituted by the Government of India. He has also worked at the IMF and as an advisor to both the RBI and the Ministry of Finance, New Delhi. He serves as an independent member on the board of one of India's major integrated energy companies, Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation.