Arvind Panagariya Biography: Age, Early Life, Economist, NITI Aayog, Finance Commission and Books

He taught at the University of Maryland at College Park for about twenty-five years, where he co-directed its Center for International Economics. He has also worked at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, and was Chief Economist of the Asian Development Bank in Manila in the early 2000s. He moved to Columbia University in 2004. His research covers trade policy, regional trade agreements and the economic history of India since independence.

Through newspaper columns over three decades and books such as India: The Emerging Giant (2008) he argued that India’s faster growth after 1991 was the result of opening the economy, and that labour-intensive manufacturing for export was the surest way to create jobs. In Why Growth Matters (2013), written with Jagdish Bhagwati, he made the case that growth had reduced poverty in India, in a public debate with Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze, who put more weight on public spending on health and education.

In January 2015 the government replaced the Planning Commission with NITI Aayog and named him its first Vice Chairman, with Cabinet rank. He oversaw the body’s three-year action agenda, recommended the privatisation of Air India and other loss-making public enterprises, proposed coastal employment zones and worked on reform of medical education regulation. He was also India’s Sherpa to the G20. He returned to Columbia in August 2017 when his leave ended.

The Sixteenth Finance Commission, which he chairs, recommends how central taxes are shared between the Union and the states for the five years from April 2026. It submitted its report to the President in November 2025. He has also been Chancellor of Nalanda University.