Ashok Lahiri: Technocrat turned politician who will spearhead NITI Aayog

Veteran economist Ashok Lahiri, with experience across IMF, finance ministry and electoral politics, will take over as vice chairman of NITI Aayog as Suman Bery retires later this month

Ashok Lahiri, the newly appointed vice-chairman of the central government think tank Niti Aayog, brings a rare combination of experience spanning government, the private sector and electoral politics.

 

After graduating from Presidency College in Kolkata, Lahiri, now 74, completed a PhD at the Delhi School of Economics. His early intellectual footprint emerged in an unlikely arena for a macroeconomist: Election analysis. In the 1980s, he worked with Prannoy Roy and David Butler on pioneering efforts to systematise Indian election data. Their work, including India Decides, helped shift political commentary from anecdote towards empirical analysis.

 

Lahiri later held senior positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as an economist and worked as a consultant for the World Bank, focusing on macroeconomic stability and structural reform. He also served as director of the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy between 1998 and 2002, India’s leading fiscal policy think tank.

 

 

He rose to national prominence in 2002 after being appointed the 12th chief economic adviser under the government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. His reputation for technocratic neutrality was reinforced when the incoming administration led by Manmohan Singh retained him in the role in 2004 for a further three years, a rare expression of bipartisan confidence in India’s sharply polarised policy landscape.

 

The Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, legislated under the NDA government and operationalised during the UPA years, drew on analytical work within the finance ministry, including contributions from Lahiri, who was part of the Kelkar Task Force that shaped its implementation framework.

 

Lahiri later moved to Manila as executive director at the Asian Development Bank, overseeing regional development finance. In 2015, he was appointed non-executive chairman of Bandhan Bank as it transitioned into a universal bank. His role focused largely on governance and institutional consolidation. In 2017, he stepped down to join the 15th Finance Commission, where he played a key role in shaping the revenue-sharing formula between the Centre and the states.

 

After decades in policy circles, Lahiri entered grassroots politics in West Bengal. Ahead of the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party initially fielded him from Alipurduar before shifting him to Balurghat, where he won -- a rare instance of a senior economist successfully making the transition into electoral politics late in his career. The BJP has not fielded him in the ongoing Assembly elections in West Bengal.

 

The central argument of his 2023 book, India In Search of Glory, is that India’s weaknesses in basic public service delivery stem from inadequate investment in the capacity of the state to provide those services effectively. A longstanding advocate of fiscal discipline with experience in grassroots politics, Lahiri now faces the question of whether he can recast Niti Aayog as a more effective intermediary between the Centre and the states.

 

After meeting Lahiri on Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who chairs Niti Aayog, said Lahiri’s experience in economics and public policy would strengthen India’s reform trajectory and its ambition of becoming a “Viksit Bharat”. “I am confident that his efforts will make our country's policy-making even more dynamic,” Modi said.

 

N K Singh, chairman of the 15th Finance Commission, described Lahiri as an outstanding and exceptional choice for Niti Aayog, combining technocratic expertise with the administrative capabilities the institution requires. “He not only will have to deal with the central government, but with the state governments as well. His experience during his membership in the 15th Finance Commission gives him good exposure and familiarity with the fiscal and debt trajectories of state governments, which is necessary to spur economic growth at the state level,” Singh added.