Budget 2024: Meet V Anantha Nageswaran: The man shaping India's economic policy

In the second of his two years as the government’s chief economic adviser, Nageswaran was a crucial cog in the wheel that was the Indian G20 Presidency.

V Anantha Nageswaran was named the government's chief economic adviser days before the Budget for 2022-23 was presented on February 1, 2022. Set to complete two years in the job later this month, the government's top economist will be a key player in the making of the interim Budget for 2024-25.

Nageswaran would have spearheaded the drafting of the Economic Survey for 2023-24 to be tabled in Parliament the day before the Budget's presentation but with the budget only a vote-on-account this time, the survey will now be presented in July ahead of the full budget.

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In the second of his two years as the government's chief economic adviser, Nageswaran was a crucial cog in the wheel that was the Indian G20 presidency that spanned 2023 and was heavily involved in the Finance Track of the Presidency. He has also repeatedly voiced his concerns on matters of global importance, ranging from climate finance and issues plaguing the methodologies used by global ratings agencies in assigning ratings to emerging market countries such as India.

Nageswaran has a PhD in finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where his dissertation was on the behaviour of exchange rates, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

An author of four books, Nageswaran served as a part-time member on the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister from 2019 to 2021. He has also taught at business schools and management institutes in India and Singapore, and spent 17 years in the corporate sector working with the likes of UBS, Credit Suisse, and Julius Baer.