Subir Gokarn appointed fourth deputy governor

Subir Vithal Gokarn, has been appointed as the fourth deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by the government. Gokarn, Standard and Poor’s Asia-Pacific Chief Economist and a Business Standard columnist, has been appointed for a three-year term, is likely to take charge next week. Generally deputy governors can be appointed for a maximum of five years or till the age of 62, whichever is earlier.

Gokarn is replacing Rakesh Mohan, who resigned in June. The 50-year-old economist will possibly get the monetary policy department. The other three deputy governors are Usha Thorat, Shyamala Gopinath and KC Chakrabarty.

Usually two deputy governors of the central bank are appointed from outside, one of them being an economist.

After Mohan had resigned, RBI Governor D Subbarao had re-allocated the portfolios of deputy governors, but had held back the monetary policy department (MPD). Currently the department of economic analysis and policy and the department of statistics and information management are being looked after by the governor himself. Gokarn, who is also a macroeconomist like his predecessor, will possibly get some of the key departments that were being looked after by Mohan.

Gokarn was born in October 1959, will be one of the youngest deputy governors of the Indian central bank in recent times. After graduating from St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, and Delhi School of Economics, he did doctorate from Case Western Reserve University of Cleveland, Ohio. His doctoral thesis was “Capital market, liberalization and industrial performance – A study of South Korean manufacturing sector”.

Before joining S&P in 2007, Gokarn was working as the chief economist of Crisil, where the global rating agency holds a majority stake. He also worked as an associate professor of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai.

When Gokarn was working as chief economist at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Mohan was the director-general of the New Delhi-based think-tank.

The economist has been selected for deputy governor position after a round of interaction with an appointment panel headed by the RBI governor. Gokarn’s appointment has taken longer time than expected because the government took time to prepare a database. Others in the race were Arvind Virmani, the government’s chief economic advisor, Ashoka Mody, assistant director at the International Monetary Fund’s European department, and Jahangir Aziz, JPMorgan India’s chief economist.