Government elects IIMA professor to RBI’s monetary policy panel

Jayanth R Varma, one of the three economists on the panel, is a professor of finance and accounting at the first institute.


Professor at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) Jayanth R Varma is among the three eminent economists appointed as members of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve that sets the Bank of India (RBI). The committee works to determine the policy interest rate to achieve the inflation target.

Varma, a professor in the area of ​​finance and accounting, is also an IIMA alumnus as was the institute’s PGDM and PhD. Popular with students, he teaches courses in capital markets, fixed income, alternative investments, risk management, and corporate finance. RBI and IIMA have a long association as a former faculty member Professor Ravindra Dholakia He was also a member of the RBI Committee. Additionally, three others who led RBI also have a connection to IIMA: IG Patel, former IIMA director, C Rangarajan, former faculty member, and Raghuram rajan, a student. Varma declined to comment on the development, citing the MPC meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the students are proud of their favorite teacher. Shobhit Shubhankar, one of his former students, was one of the first to take to social media to praise Varma while sharing interesting anecdotes. “Professor Jayanth Varma taught us a course on financial markets at IIMA. It was a 15 session course with a short break after 10 sessions. We had a tradition of banging on our tables to express appreciation and gratitude to the instructor in the last session of each plate. Prof. Varma, we started hitting in the eighth session itself, “he said on social media.

“He would never react to that. He would just wait for it to finish, look a bit embarrassed, rush to the board, or start his presentation and teach again,” he said.

The other two members of the MPC are Aashima goyal, professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research and Dr. Shashanka bhide, Senior Advisor, National Council for Applied Economic Research.