NEW DELHI: A day after being named the vice chairman of Niti Aayog, economist Rajiv Kumar tweeted India was on the path to becoming a ‘global exemplar’.
“With India’s simultaneous triple transition — social, political and economic — well on course, our country will be global exemplar. 70% Indians are optimistic about our future. I am gratified to be in a position to be able to contribute to reinforce this optimism,” he said.
A homegrown economist, Kumar brings a wealth of administrative experience to his new role. He is currently a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and has also served as the director of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
He holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a PhD from Lucknow University and was a member of the National Security Advisory Board.
A long-standing supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies, Rajiv’s book “Modi and his Challenges” compares the Prime Minister’s “remarkable stint” as Gujarat CM with his performance in Delhi.
Kumar has also been a vocal critic on several issues.
“The Indian democracy is seen as emerging out of its elitist phase engendered and nurtured by the Nehruvian ethos that comprised of an elite political leadership imbued by western values and ideologies lording over the masses sans accountability,” he wrote in an article titled ‘Yogi and the road ahead will benefit everyone’ in British tabloid Daily Mail.
More recently, Kumar attacked Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian on social media over a critical comment the latter made in the US on loan waivers. “Would it not be better to have these debates in the country rather than in Washington DC?” Kumar asked on Twitter.