Anand Chandavarkar Archives - Tiger and Palm Tree

IG Patel as Deputy Economic Adviser

As the Chairman of the Planning Commission, Prime Minister Nehru signs the draft first five year plan in 1951. To his right is Gulzarilal Nanda, Deputy Chairman. Behind Nanda is RK Patil (ICS, 1931), Member, who resigned from the service in 1943 for social work. Partially covered behind him is probably N Raghavan Pillai (ICS,1922), Cabinet Secretary and ex-officio Secretary to the Commission. To his right is Tarlok Singh, the Deputy Secretary, who served for long on the Commission earning it the moniker, Tarlok Sabha. Behind him is a young KN Raj, 27, who prepared the draft. To Nehru’s left are, in that order, CD Deshmukh, Finance Minister and Member, GL Mehta, later Indian Ambassador to the US (1952-58), and VT Krishnamachari, who we meet again and will encounter again.

Dr IG Patel’s tenure as Deputy Economic Adviser lasted from 1954 to 1959. By then, the first five year plan was already in progress. The work on the second plan had started. In the third part on IG’s life, we discuss a few major developments and other anecdotes. A detailed discussion on the second plan follows in another post. Continue reading “IG Patel as Deputy Economic Adviser”

Answers to RBI Quiz 2022

The long answers to RBI Quiz 2022 are given below: Continue reading “Answers to RBI Quiz 2022”

The Report on Currency and Finance

The New Report on Currency and Finance

The Reserve Bank of India released its new Report on Currency and Finance (RCF) in February this year. This comes nearly a decade after the previous issue. The RCF is a non-statutory report, unlike the Annual Report and Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India (RTP). The former is published under the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934. The RTP is published under the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. The 2021 RCF is significant in three ways. It is the centenary of the first consolidated report of the Controller of the Currency, which became the RCF. For the first time, it is a discussion paper on a specific issue. It is also the first issue of RCF with a foreword signed by the Governor, Reserve Bank of India. The RCF has had a chequered history, which is worth recounting. Continue reading “The Report on Currency and Finance”