After Raghuram, another economist quits Team Modi
Panagariya will go back to teaching job at Columbia University
In a surprise move, NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya has decided to quit the re-structured planning panel and return to his first love — teaching. Within a month, Panagariya would go back to his teaching job at America’s Columbia University, from where he came to join Team Modi. On Tuesday, he said he had communicated his decision to the Prime Minister.
Panagariya, incidentally, is the second economist of the Narendra Modi regime to go back to academia. The first was former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, who refused a second stint offered to him.
After the BJP-led central government decided to wind up the Planning Commission and scrap the five-year planning process, it was Panagariya who had come up with a 15-year vision document, seven year strategy paper and three year action agenda. The agenda was released on April 23 and it was expected that Panagariya would oversee its implementation. The most important element of the agenda was to double farmers’ income by 2022-2023.
Panagariya was recently in the news for his frank opinion about the present state of the economy. A through professional, he had said that “job creation in the country was truly the biggest challenge, probably bigger than growing (of the economy) at eight per cent”.
Of late, NITI Aayog was being pummelled publicly by RSS-linked economic think-tanks.