The Government of India on January 28 appointed Dr V Anantha Nageswaran as the new Chief Economic Adviser after former CEA Krishnamurthy Subramanian returned to academia completing his three-year term.

Nageswaran, a former member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC), takes charge days before the tabling of the Economic Survey on 31 January and the Union Budget on 1 February. The Economic Survey has been drafted by a team led by Principal Economic Advisor Sanjeev Sanyal.

Some of the challenges that he along with the finance ministry need to tackle include income inequality and growing unemployment among its billion-plus population.

The new CEA will be responsible for providing fresh ideas to bolster growth, investments and limiting fiscal deficit.

Prior to this appointment, Dr Nageswaran has worked as a writer, author, teacher and consultant. He has taught at several business schools and institutes of management in India, and in Singapore and has published extensively.

He was the Dean of the IFMR Graduate School of Business and a distinguished Visiting Professor of Economics at Krea University. 

He has also been a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India from 2019 to 2021. He holds a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.