The soft-spoken economic affairs secretary-designate Tarun Bajaj is no stranger to the intricacies of economic policy making. A pass out from the 1988 IAS batch of Haryana cadre, 58-year old Bajaj cut his teeth in the Department of Financial Services during 2006-2011.
First as director, and then as joint secretary in charge of insurance, Bajaj played an important role in resolving the SEBI-IRDAI spat in 2010 over the jurisdiction of unit linked investment plans (ULIPs). After his stint in DFS, he worked briefly in the Department of Economic Affairs, before becoming part of the Prime Minister’s Office in 2015.
Bajaj's academic credentials are impressive as well. A commerce graduate from Shriram College, he also holds an MSc degree from London School of Economics, an MBA degree from IIM Ahmedabad and is a certified Chartered Financial Analyst. Among his peers in Finance Ministry, few others can boast of such qualifications.
With two years of active service remaining, Bajaj is expected to team up with the RBI to steer the government’s economic policy responses to the perfect storm created by the COVID pandemic. It helps that during Bajaj's tenure at DFS, current RBI Governor too was holding a key responsibility in the Department of Economic Affairs, part of the Finance Ministry.
As an immediate priority, the government has to take some tough calls on stepping up public expenditure in the face of zero revenues, and announce the next set of relief measures. Over the next few months, government will also have to face the possibility of RBI monetising the government deficit, and the big reset of GDP numbers.
First Published: Apr 27, 2020 1:10 PM IST
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