D. Subbarao

Duvvuri Subbarao was born on 11 August 1949 is an Indian economist, central banker, and civil servant. He is the 22nd and current Governor of Reserve Bank of India, serving under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Subbarao is a 1972 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre. On 5 September 2008, he was appointed the twenty-second Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI); his term was to end in September 2011. But breaking from tradition, the Prime Minister's Office extended his term by two years and put out a statement announcing that Subbarao, a former finance secretary would now retire on September 4, 2013.

Early life

Subbarao's hometown is Eluru in West Godavari district, a city near Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh. He did his schooling from the Sainik School in Korukonda, Andhra Pradesh. He graduated in Physics B.Sc Hons. from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (class of 1969) where he was the recipient of Director's Gold Medal.

He received a M.Sc degree also in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Subbarao topped the Civil Services Examination in 1972 and was assigned the Andhra Pradesh cadre.

In 1978, he did a Masters degree in economics from Ohio State University, United States. After a few years, Subbarao joined the Humphrey Fellowship program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study Quantitative Economic Modelling. He became a Humphrey Fellow at MIT in 1982. He later received a Ph.D. in Economics from Andhra University. His doctoral thesis was titled "Fiscal reforms at the sub-national level" (1998).

Career

Dr.Subbarao worked as the joint secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India between 1988 and 1993. Subsequently he became the Finance Secretary to the Government of Andhra Pradesh between 1993 and 1998. On completion of his term, he was deputed as lead economist in the World Bank from 1994 to 2004. On completion of his term, he was appointed to the Prime Ministers’ Economic Advisory Council from 2005 to 2007 before he was elevated as the Finance Secretary in 2007.On 5 September 2008, he was appointed the twenty-second Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI and Arun Ramanathan was appointed as Finance Secretary on September 21, 2008 in his vacancy. His term was extended for two more years in 2011.

Dr.Subbarao was involved in the initiation of fiscal reforms at the state level and had managed a flagship study on decentralisation across major countries of East Asia including China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Cambodia.He is credited with financial turnaround of Andhra Pradesh in late nineties when the state had slipped into an unprecedented fiscal crisis