D Subba Rao Biography: Duvvuri Subbarao (born August 11, 1949) is a retired IAS officer, Central Banker, and Indian economist. He served as the 22nd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India under Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India. After leaving RBI, he served as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the National University of Singapore and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively.
Subbarao is an Andhra Pradesh cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from the 1972 class. He was appointed the 22nd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 5 September 2008 and served until 4 September 2013 with an extension in 2011.
D Subba Rao Biography
D Subba Rao Early years
Subbarao is from Eluru in the Andhra Pradesh district of West Godavari. From 1962 to 1965, he attended Sainik School in Korukonda, Andhra Pradesh. Later, he earned a BSc Hons in Physics from the Institute of Technology Kharagpur between 1966 and 1969 and an MSc from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Subbarao topped the 1972 Civil Services Examination and was appointed to the Andhra Pradesh cadre of the Indian Administrative Service.
Subbarao took study leave in 1977–1978 to pursue a master’s degree in economics at Ohio State University, United States. During 1982 to 1983, he studied public finance at MIT as a Humphrey Fellow. He received a doctorate in economics from Andhra University in 1988. His doctoral dissertation was titled “Fiscal Reforms at the Subnational Level”
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Profession
Early in his career, Subbarao held field positions in Andhra Pradesh. As a collector of Andhra Pradesh’s Khammam District in 1979, he earned a formidable reputation for diligently and methodically implementing the land transfer regulation, which primarily involved restoring tribal households’ lost land due to indebtedness in accordance with the protective legislation. As managing director of the Andhra Pradesh State Finance Corporation from 1986 to 1988, he encouraged first-generation entrepreneurs to invest in the industry and service sectors.
Subbarao was deputed to the Indian government as a joint secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, where he participated in the formulation and implementation of the 1991 reforms. Subsequently, he served as the Finance Secretary for the Government of Andhra Pradesh from 1993 to 1998, during which time he is credited with implementing a number of innovative fiscal reforms. He was the driving force behind the state government’s 1996 decision to publish a white paper on state finances, which did much to garner public support for politically challenging economic reforms.
From 1999 to 2004, he worked as a senior economist for the World Bank, encouraging public expenditure reforms in developing nations. In addition, he supervised the flagship World Bank study on decentralisation in East Asia.
Upon his return to India from the World Bank, he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (2005–2007) and then promoted to the position of Finance Secretary in 2007. On 5 September 2008, he was appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), becoming the first serving civil servant and the first person born after independence to be appointed as central bank Governor. On 21 September 2008, Arun Ramanathan was nominated as Finance Secretary to fill his vacancy. In 2011, Subbarao’s mandate was extended by two years.
D Subba Rao Successful actions
As India’s Finance Secretary, Subbarao questioned the rationale behind giving away valuable spectrum to telecom operators in 2007 at prices set in 2001. He argued that fresh tendering was necessary to determine the current price. The judge noted in the decision that Subbarao was an outstanding witness in the CBI case involving alleged corruption by ministers and civil servants in the allocation of 2G spectrum.
Subbarao’s tenure as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India was, by all accounts, a period of uncommon global and Indian unrest. Within a week of his assuming office, a global financial crisis broke out. Then, as the impact of the crisis on India began to wane, the focus shifted to combating an unusually persistent spell of inflation (2009–11), followed by a battle against a sharp depreciation of the rupee due to what became known as taper tantrums. Subbarao is generally credited with safely navigating the Indian economy through the financial crisis, although he has been criticised for failing to staunch the rupee’s decline during the taper outbursts.
Subbarao’s tenure as RBI Governor will be most remembered for his courageous defence of the central bank’s independence. His tenure will also be remembered for his efforts to demystify the central bank, establish communication channels with stakeholders, and engage the general public. He was instrumental in ensuring that the entire population of the Ernakulam district in Kerala was financially included. Subbarao is credited with developing the theory of the New Trilemma of central bankers, which he referred to as the “Holy Trinity” of price stability, financial stability, and sovereign debt sustainability, in contrast to Mundell’s famous “impossible trinity” of a fixed exchange rate, free capital flows, and independent monetary policy. Subbarao’s erudite explanation of the holy trinity firmly entrenched the Indian viewpoint in the scholarly discussion on the global central banking trilemma.
Controversies
Subbarao is known to have an independent mind and to have frequently disregarded the advice of his fellow Technical Advisory Group for Monetary Policy (TAG) members. To his credit, he explained in his memoir why he had to oppose the TAG’s position.
D Subba Rao Personal Life
His spouse is Urmila Subbarao. Mallik and Raghav, their two sons, are both IIT graduates like their father.