New Delhi: The advisory council appointed by the Sixteenth Finance Commission has overwhelmingly relied on expertise from the private sector, with four of its five members coming from consultancies, investment banks or brokerages.
This marks a significant shift from the advisory council for the Fifteenth Finance Commission, which had just two of its six members from the private sector.
The present council announced Tuesday comprises D.K. Srivastava, Neelkanth Mishra, Poonam Gupta, Pranjul Bhandari, and Rahul Bajoria.
Of these, Poonam Gupta, Director General of the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), is the only member not from an outright private sector body. However, even NCAER is partly funded by private industry, according to its website.
Gupta joined NCAER in 2021 after spending over two decades in prominent positions at the IMF and World Bank in Washington, DC. Gupta has also taught at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE), the University of Maryland (USA), and as a visiting faculty member at ISI Delhi.
D.K. Srivastava is currently EY India’s chief policy advisor, a noted economist, and professor at the Madras School of Economics.
Axis Bank’s chief economist, Neelkanth Misra, is a respected expert and media columnist covering global and Indian macroeconomic trends. Incidentally, he is also the only member of the council to have also served in the previous panel.
The Finance Commission is a constitutionally mandated body created every five years to delineate the fiscal relationship between the Centre and the states. The role and functions of the advisory council include advising the Commission on any Terms of Reference (ToR) or related subjects that may be of relevance.
Secondly, the council is tasked with assisting in the preparation of papers and research studies, and to monitor commissioned studies by the Finance Commission.
The council would also help broaden the Finance Commission’s ambit and understanding by seeking the best national and international practices on matters pertaining to fiscal devolution and improving the quality, reach, and enforcement of its recommendations.
The contrast in the makeup of the advisory councils of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Finance Commissions is quite stark.
The Fifteenth Finance Commission’s council included only two members from the private sector: Neelkanth Misra, who served as co-head of Asia Pacific strategy at Credit Suisse Group at the time, and Sajjid Chinoy, chief India economist at J.P. Morgan.
The other four members included Arvind Virmani, then the president of the think-tank Forum for Strategic Initiatives, Surjit Bhalla, a part-time member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council at the time, Sanjeev Gupta, a former deputy director at the International Monetary Fund, and Pinaki Chakraborty, a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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