Gulati, Kumar, Sabharwal on RBI board

Mumbai: In a move aimed at beefing up the RBI’s board, the government has nominated Rajiv Kumar,

Ashok Gulati

and

Manish Sabharwal

as directors on the central bank’s board for four years with effect from February 9.

Gulati is an agricultural economist and former chairman of the

Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices

(

CACP

). Earlier, he was director at the

International Food Policy Research Institute

(

IFPRI

). Manish Sabharwal co-founder and chairman of TeamLease Services Private is a serial entrepreneur. He is also co-founder at Hewitt Outsourcing Services India, and IndiaLife Hewitt. He also co-founded ICap India and India Insure Risk Management.

Rajiv Kumar is an economist and senior fellow at Centre for Policy Research and the author of several books on the Indian economy and India’s national security. He is also the founding director of Pahle India Foundation, a non-profit research organisation that specialises in policy-oriented research and analysis.

The appointments will increase the number of external (non-RBI directors) to nine from six at present. The directors already there on the board are veteran banker Nachiket Mor, N Chandrasekaran, chairman, Tata Sons, Bharat Doshi , non-executive chairman, Mahindra & Mahindra and Sudhir Mankad former Gujarat chief secretary. Besides the

Shaktikanta Das

, secretary, department of economic affairs and Anjuly Chib Duggal secretary department of financial services are part of the board.

The RBI act allows the government to nominate 10 members from various fields in addition to the two government officials. The RBI members include governor Urjit Patel and deputy governors R Gandhi, SS Mundra, NS Vishwanathan and Viral Acharya.