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The 10 Economic Experts Who Advise our PM
By siliconindia
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Friday, 30 September 2011, 01:45 IST |
4 Comments
5. Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Advisor, Finance Ministry:
Kaushik Basu was born in Kolkata, and schooled at St. Xavier's Collegiate School. In 1969 he moved to Delhi to do his undergraduate studies in Economics (Honors), with Mathematics as subsidiary, from St. Stephen's College. He then went on to the London School of Economics, to do his M.Sc in Economics. After completing his M.Sc in 1974, he stayed on at the London School for his PhD. He did his PhD on choice theory under the chairmanship of Amartya Sen.
He is currently the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India[1] and is also the C. Marks Professor of International Studies and Professor of Economics and, till recently, he was Chairman of the Department of Economics and Director, Center for Analytic Economics at Cornell University. On completing his PhD from London, Basu lectured briefly at Reading University, and returned to India in 1977, to be Reader in Economics and, later, Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics.
Basu made headlines recently when he gave his bold opinions about making bribing legal. Speaking to WSJ, Basu commented that 'for a certain class of bribes, describes as 'harassment bribes', bribe giving should be a legitimate activity. Such bribes should be directed only toward getting services to which you and I are legally entitled at the moment, such as an income tax refund or customs clearance for an exporter's goods.' In a working paper, Basu argues that decriminalizing bribe paying would cause a sharp decline in the incidence of bribery.
