Raghuram Rajan: 5 Things To Know About The RBI Governor

Raghuram Rajan comes across as a person with panache, but, one who also knows his job very well. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor has in the past rightly predicted a global economic slowdown.

To a great extent we can say that he has managed to do his job well as the RBI governor, especially in taming inflation levels, which now many economists term as not controlling inflation, but, bringing prices to a deflationary level.

Of course there are also critics of the governor who believe that he has given too much emphasis to inflation, while growth still has not achieved its full potential in India.

Raghuram Rajan is the current and the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

Raghuram Rajan has an eye for details and comes with a long standing track record, especially in foreign assignments.

Most Indians tend to refer him as a rockstar economist. Some even have given him the nickname of James Bond for his out of the box thinking and his approach to the economy and not giving up due to other external pressures.

Rajan came into limelight after the prediction of the 2008 mortgage crisis way before it happened.

Rajan has had assignments as the Economic Counselor and Director of Research or call it the Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from September 2003 till January 2007. He left his post at the prestigious University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and returned to India to work for India.

Here are few known and unknown points about our governor.

1) Personal

Raghuram Rajan was born in 1963 in the North Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in a Tamil family. He is married to Radhika Puri, a batchmate from the IIM Ahmedabad.

2) Education

Raghuram Rajan completed his graduation from the IIT, Delhi (Indian Institute of technology) in Electrical Engineering in 1985. He later acquired a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from the prestigious IIIM, Ahmedabad in 1987.

He won Director's Gold Medal in IIT Delhi and was a Gold medalist at IIM Ahmedabad. He received a Ph.D. in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1991 for his thesis titled "Essays on Banking"

4) Awards

In 2003, Raghuram Rajan won the Fischer Black Prize. This was bestowed on him by the American Finance Association for his solid contributions in "theory and practice of finance". This was given to an economist who has not attained the age of 40.

Rajan was also awarded the 5th Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics 2013 on September 26, 2013 for his "ground-breaking research work which influenced financial and macro-economic policies around the world".

After taking over as the governor, Euromoney Magazine honoured him with the Best Central Bank Governor award for 2014.

He has also received the prestigious Governor of the Year Award - 2014 from London-based financial journal Central Banking.

4) Books

Raghuram Rajan has co-authored book "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists", with fellow Chicago Booth professor Luigi Zingales.

His book Author of Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for 2010.

He has also published numerous articles in finance and economics journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance and Oxford Review of Economic Policy.

5) Economic View

Rajan has been actively involved in Indian economy, involving in important economic roles, including the economic adviser to the Planning Commission, Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance and now RBI Governor, for a period of three years which will end in 2016.

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