An Economist At Home And Abroad

Economist, author, government adviser, banker and columnist, Dr Shankar Acharya has led a richly varied professional and personal life spanning continents. An alumnus of Highgate School (London), Oxford and Harvard, Dr Acharya worked at the World Bank for a decade before joining the Ministry of Finance as economic adviser where he crafted finance minister V.P. Singh’s path-breaking long-term fiscal policy, which ushered in the MODVAT. After a brief deputation overseas in 1991-92 he returned as the country’s longest-serving chief economic adviser to ministers Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha. Since 2001, he has undertaken a variety of assignments, which include his twelve-year long chairmanship of Kotak Mahindra Bank, stints as a member of the Twelfth Finance Commission and the National Security Advisory Board and columnist for a leading economic daily. In May 2020, he was one of the first people to predict the deep economic recession in India following the onset of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdown.

Written with warmth and a rare honesty, An Economist at Home and Abroad presents the engaging journey of one of the most accomplished policy economists of our times whose views on contentious issues are often the definitive opinion.