Economist Rajiv Kumar will be the new vice-chairman of Niti Aayog after incumbent Arvind Panagariya resigned earlier this week.
Vinod Rai, a pediatrician at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) will be the new member of Niti Aayog, the government announced late Saturday evening.
With the appointment of Rai, Niti Aayog will now function with a full strength of a vice-chairman, a CEO and four members as it was originally conceptualised in January 2015 when the Aayog was set up with an executive order. The Prime Minister is the chairman of the Niti Aayog.
Rajiv Kumar is a senior fellow at Centre for Policy Research, a think tank on policy research in the country. Kumar is also the chancellor of the Gokhale Institute of Economics and Politics in Pune.
Before coming to CPR, he was secretary general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci). He has also served as director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) and chief economist of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). He had held positions with the Asian Development Bank, the Indian Ministry of Industries, and the Ministry of Finance.
He also sits on the boards of several international and national institutions, including the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Riyadh, the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and Asia in Jakarta, the State Bank of India, and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. He was a member of the Centre’s National Security Advisory Board between 2006 and 2008.
Kumar, a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University, has authored several books on Indian economy and the country’s national security.
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