Indira Rajaraman

Indira Rajaraman is Honorary Visiting Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi since February 2010.  She was a Member of the Thirteenth Finance Commission from 2007 to 2009, the first woman to be so honoured. The report of the Commission was submitted in December 2009, and tabled as accepted in Parliament in February 2010. From 1994 to 2007 she held the Reserve Bank of India Chair at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi, and from 1976 to 1994 she was on the Economics faculty of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.  She obtained her PhD in Economics from Cornell University in January 1974 (mid-year Commencement). She was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard and Stanford Universities (1984-85), and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1992-93).  Dr. Rajaraman’s research papers have appeared in journals and books published by Elsevier, Springer Verlag, John Wiley, the Brookings Institution and Oxford University Press, on a wide range of issues covering trade policy, rural labour markets, formal and informal financial institutions, and fiscal policy. She serves as a referee for international journals, and has been on a number of national and international policy committees.  She was a member of a major financial sector transparency assessment conducted jointly by the Government and the Reserve Bank of India, the report of which was issued in six volumes in 2009. She was a member of the R.V.Gupta Committee, whose report in 1998 on the interest rate structure on small savings, led to the dismantling of the structural elements that made India a high-interest environment.  The growth dividend followed. She has been a columnist in the financial press since 2001. She is a member of the Advisory Committee on Fiscal Programs of the Forum of Federations, Ottawa.